Sibanye Stillwater Limited (Sibanye Stellwater) announced its third quarter 2022 and first half fiscal year 2022 financial results.
In the third quarter of 2022, Sibanye Stellwater produced 1,653 tonnes of battery-grade refined nickel, 650 tonnes of nickel salts and 1,003 tonnes of nickel metals from its Sandouville refinery in Europe. In the first half of 2022, 2,919 tons of nickel, 668 tons of nickel salt and 2,251 tons of nickel metal were produced.
Sandouville Nickel refinery
Sanduvir faced various operational and logistical issues in the first quarter of 2022, including solvent supply constraints, and an engineering failure in July 2022 that temporarily took 40% of its capacity offline. In addition, a four-week technical shutdown began in September 2022 and operations restarted in mid-October 2022.
The Sandouville Nickel Refinery produced 1,003 tonnes of nickel metal in Q3 2022 (2,251 tonnes in Q2 2022), 650 tonnes of nickel salt (668 tonnes in Q2 2022) and 37 tonnes of cobalt chloride (78 tonnes in Q1 2022), Nickel equivalent maintenance costs were $30,185 /tNi (R514654/tNi), 12% higher than the second quarter of 2022.
The current focus is on improving the continuity and stability of production by de-bottlenecking the plant to increase nickel metal production to about 12kt, nickel salt to about 4kt and cobalt chloride to about 600t by 2026.
Recent increases in electricity and natural gas prices have reduced operating gross margins and pose an ongoing risk to costs, particularly during the upcoming winter season when the future supply and availability of energy and natural gas in Europe is uncertain. While production at the current plant is ongoing, Sibanye Stillwater continues to advance pre-feasibility studies for the following three processes, expected to be completed in 2023: the production of battery-grade nickel sulfate, which is planned to produce 44,000 tons per year in two phases; PGM automatic catalyst using European raw materials; Recycle battery metal.
