Appian Capital, a London-based private-equity firm, is said to be in advanced talks to sell its Atlantic nickel mining unit in Brazil for about $1 billion, with Canada's Teck Resources as a possible buyer.
Atlantic Nickel owns the Santa Rita mine, one of the largest open-pit Nickel sulfide mines in the world. The mine was operated by Mirabela Nickel for six years before it entered the maintenance and maintenance phase in 2015 due to low Nickel prices.
Appian, which acquired the mine from Mirabela Nickel in 2018, is reportedly seeking to recover the sunk funds to bring the mine back into production, estimated at $1 billion.
Open-pit operations are expected to continue until 2028, with an estimated annual production capacity of 1.65 million tons of nickel sulphide concentrate. Atlantic nickel said the Santa would then go underground, extending the mine's life from eight years to 34 years.
Based on the one-year Preliminary Economic Assessment (PEA), the open-pit measured and indicated resource was 59.15 million tons with grades of 0.33% nickel sulfide, 0.11% copper, 0.01% cobalt, 0.03 g palladium/ton, 0.06 g platinum/ton and 0.04 g gold/ton.
The indicated resource for the underground mine is 54.59 million tons with a grade of 0.58% nickel sulfide, 0.18% copper, 0.01% cobalt, 0.05 g palladium, 0.10 g platinum and 0.07 g gold.
Last week, the company shipped 11, 121.44 tonnes of nickel concentrate, the biggest so far this year and an annual export of more than 80, 000 tonnes.
