Nickel has become a significantly larger component of lithium-ion batteries than lithium itself. Nickel is the most important metal by mass in lithium-ion battery cathodes used by EV manufacturers. Nickel is used in two of the dominant battery chemistries for EVs, the nickel-manganese-cobalt (NMC) battery used in the Chevy Bolt, Nissan Leaf, and BMW i3; and the nickel-cobalt-aluminum (NCA) battery manufactured by Tesla/Panasonic. Currently, only 5% of global nickel production is consumed for EV batteries, but nickel demand for EV batteries will grow rapidly over the next eight years to a level that is equal to 58% of current global nickel production.
Nickel deposits come in two forms: sulfide or laterite. About 60% of the world’s known nickel resources are laterites. The remaining 40% are sulfide deposits.
Sulfide deposits are the primary source of Class 1 Nickel. Nickel products that fall into Class 1, mined from sulfide deposits, are the only nickel suitable for EV batteries.
Since 1990, 50 major nickel discoveries have been made globally containing a total of 96.4 million tonnes of nickel. It is becoming much more difficult to discover nickel with only 3 of these major discoveries containing a total of 6.75 million tonnes of nickel made during the past decade. To make matter worse, nickel sulfide deposits that can be used to produce battery-grade Class 1 nickel account for only 19% or 18.1 million tonnes of the total nickel contained in the 50 major nickel discoveries made since 1990!
A few days ago on December 26, 2021, Vale (VALE) a $66 billion market cap company announced that it is setting a goal of capturing 30%-40% of the North American market for battery-grade nickel within five years. VALE announced that their key to meeting this goal is to rapidly increase nickel production in their Sudbury Nickel Camp because that is where VALE's highest-grade nickel sulfide deposits are located that are most suitable for Class 1 Nickel output to U.S. EV automobile manufacturers. Click here to read an extremely important article about this published by FT on December 26, 2021!
SPC Nickel (TSXV: SPC) owns two massive nickel sulfide projects located in the Sudbury Nickel Camp that are completely surrounded by VALE's highest quality nickel sulfide properties! With VALE getting ready to focus on ramping up its Sudbury nickel production to meet its goal of capturing 30%-40% of the North American market for battery-grade nickel within five years, the value of SPC's directly adjacent past producing nickel sulfide projects will increase tremendously in the weeks ahead!
SPC's current market cap at $0.15 per share is only $15.329 million and SPC has a huge cash position of $5.34 million giving SPC an insanely low enterprise value of less than $10 million!
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