African Rainbow Minerals signed a conditional deal to sell nickel to a smelter owned by Boliden AB, offering a pathway for reopening a mothballed mine in South Africa.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The transaction would see nickel concentrate from the Nkomati mine sent to the Harjavalta smelter in Finland \u201cover a multi-year period,\u201d ARM said on Tuesday.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Johannesburg-listed firm\u2019s board must still approve the restart of mining at the asset, while Boliden needs to conduct due diligence, according to the statement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Nkomati has been shuttered since 2021, but is South Africa\u2019s only proven primary nickel resource. ARM took full control of the mine last year by closing the acquisition of a 50% interest from Russia\u2019s MMC Norilsk Nickel PJSC.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The potential deal with Sweden\u2019s Boliden \u201csupports the potential recommencement of mining at Nkomati and strengthens the Nkomati restart business case by securing an off-take route for future nickel concentrate production,\u201d ARM said. Harjavalta is the only large-scale nickel smelter in Europe.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
South African billionaire Patrice Motsepe is the founder and largest shareholder of ARM. The company\u2019s assets produce coal, gold, manganese, iron ore and platinum group metals. Boliden\u2019s mines and smelters produce copper, zinc, nickel and lead.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The statement didn\u2019t offer any information about the deal\u2019s commercial terms, citing confidentiality provisions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Reported by William Clowes for Bloomberg<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" African Rainbow Minerals signed a conditional deal with a major European company. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":59,"featured_media":858674,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9872],"tags":[3236,853],"class_list":["post-858672","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-business","tag-arm","tag-south-africa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/858672","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/59"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=858672"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/858672\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":858677,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/858672\/revisions\/858677"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/858674"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=858672"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=858672"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=858672"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}