As a follow on from yesterday’s note, we provide for your interest some of the further media commentary around Elon Musk’s recent public plea to mining companies: “It’s all about nickel. I’d just like to emphasize, any mining companies out there, please mine more nickel, OK. Wherever you are in the word, please mine more nickel. And don’t wait for nickel to go back to some long, some, high point that you experienced some five years ago or whatever. Go for efficient, you know, environmentally friendly, nickel mining at high volume. Tesla will give you a giant contract for a long period of time if you mine nickel efficiently and in an environmentally friendly way. So, hopefully this message goes out to all mining companies. Please get nickel.”
Clean TeQ’s CEO recently wrote an open letter to auto makers HERE counseling them that cooperation with miners was required to secure the materials for the electric vehicle revolution: “Something more than Procurement 101 is required.” “As unpalatable as it may sound, the only real way to reliably secure the massive quantities of raw materials you each need, at a predictable and manageable cost, is to invest upstream to build the foundations of your supply chain.”
Unfortunately it seems Sam’s message is taking a while to get through to everybody, but rest assured, we are a long way away from giving up: Overnight Elon Musk telegraphed his own public plea to mining companies. “It’s all about nickel. I’d just like to emphasize, any mining companies out there, please mine more nickel, OK. Wherever you are in the word, please mine more nickel. And don’t wait for nickel to go back to some long, some, high point that you experienced some five years ago or whatever. Go for efficient, you know, environmentally friendly, nickel mining at high volume. Tesla will give you a giant contract for a long period of time if you mine nickel efficiently and in an environmentally friendly way. So, hopefully this message goes out to all mining companies. Please get nickel.”
(Telsa earnings call – 42:20 mark of the youtube clip linked below)
Once developed, Clean TeQ’s wholly owned Sunrise Battery Materials Complex in NSW, Australia, will be a large-scale supplier of nickel, cobalt and scandium which will:
Operate in the lowest quartile of the industry cost curve;
Use a direct-to-sulphate processing route to produce battery precursor feedstock at the mine site, thereby avoiding the need for untraceable third-party or offshore refining;
Be built within close proximity to solar or wind generation to provide options for zero carbon power connection;
Recycle as much water as possible;
Offer potential to integrate with downstream precursor and cathode production to reduce processing, handling and logistics costs;
Be able to use its refining capacity as a recycling circuit for spent batteries and cathode; and
Enable critical by-product alloy metals, like scandium, to develop lighter and stronger aluminum components for the automotive and aerospace sectors.
Sunrise will maintain the highest standards in health, safety, environmental management and community relations
Sunrise will not use marine tailings disposal
Sunrise will not use child labour
