In 2009, global cobalt production was about 58,000 tons, of which about 37% (ie 22,000 tons) was a by-product of nickel mining, and nickel sulfide and laterite nickel were each half. 8% from a byproduct of copper mining and precious metals, and the remaining 55% of primary cobalt mine. Therefore, from a macro perspective, the supply of cobalt depends not only on its fundamentals, but also on the nickel and copper markets. For Queensland Nickel Corporation (QNI), the marketing of the cobalt market will increase the added value of the nickel plant. The sales revenue of cobalt can partially offset the production cost of nickel. Regardless of the calculation, cobalt is an important income of QNI, and QNI will continue. Committed to the production and direct sales of high quality cobalt products.

1. How does the nickel by-product cobalt produce?

There are two types of nickel ore that can be used to produce nickel and by-product diamond-sulphide oreite and laterite nickel. 60% of the nickel is produced from nickel sulfide ore. The cobalt content is very low, as mentioned above, about half. The by-product cobalt is from the nickel sulfide ore and the other half is from the laterite nickel ore. Nickel laterite ore is further divided into humus and brown iron ore fault. Humic earth ore has a low cobalt content and is mainly used for the production of ferronickel. It does not recover cobalt. Only a small amount of humus ore is processed into ice nickel and further smelted into metallic nickel. The limonite fault is rich in cobalt. Most of the nickel ore processing processes recover cobalt. There are two different wet processes for treating limonite. QNI's Yabru refinery uses Caron technology, Cuba's MoaBay. And the Australian Minera uses a pressure leaching process.

The iron ore nickel project is Inco's Goro project in New Caledonia, Sherritte's Ambavotory project in Madagascar and the first quantum Ravensthorpe project, all using pressurized leaching and hydrometallurgical refining processes, metallic cobalt As a by-product, the total amount of by-product metal cobalt after the three projects reached a total of 10,000 tons. Therefore, the proportion of cobalt production from nickel by-products will increase in the future.

Second, QNI introduction

QNI is one of the three companies in the world that use the Caron process to process limonite ore. The other two are located in Cuba and Brazil.

QNI owns and operates the Yabru Refined Nickel Plant on the east coast of Australia and has a history of producing cobalt for 36 years. Yabru began producing nickel and cobalt in 1974 using the local red earth nickel mine in Greenvale. Since the Yabru refinery is close to Townswill, it is easy to buy raw materials imported from overseas. In 1986, the first batch of raw materials was purchased from overseas. In 1995, the local Greenvale mine was depleted. Yabru could only handle nickel ore imported from New Caledonia, Indonesia and the Philippines.

For the past 36 years, the Yabru refinery has been easy to do. The original owner was a joint venture between Metals Exploration and Freeport Sulphur. The next owner is Mr. Alan Bond, an Australian entrepreneur who won the America's Cup. Famous for sailing competitions, when his company went bankrupt, the company was listed on the Australian Stock Exchange under the name of QNI. Before the merger of Billiton and BHP, QNI merged into the nickel division of Billiton. In 2009, BHBP sold Yabru, and Yabru was bought by another famous Australian entrepreneur, Professor Cliver Palmer. Mr. Cliver Palmer is a well-known Australian billionaire with 25 years of experience in the development and trade of mineral resources. His founder, Mineralogy, has successfully partnered with China's state-owned CITIC Pacific, which has a world in the Pilbara region of Western Australia.

On the main magnetite, CITIC Pacific has begun to export 25 million tons of iron ore from Western Australia to China every year.

Another event worth mentioning in the history of Yabru is the expansion in 2007. In March 2004, the owner BHBP announced that it would accelerate the development of the Raventhorpe project in Western Australia. The development of the project is divided into two parts, a new mine and processing plant, which produces nickel-cobalt hydroxide intermediate products, commonly referred to as MHP. The expansion of Yabru is to deal with the MHP from Raventhorpe. The expansion includes increasing the refining capacity of nickel from 32,000 tons/year to 76,000 tons/year, almost copying the current nickel-cobalt production line. The first MHPs shipped to Yabru were in December 2007, and the last in early 2009, after BHBP closed the Raventhorpe mine and processing plant, the expansion capacity is now idle.

Third, the current status of the Yabru factory

Under the direction of Mr. Cliver Palmer, Yabru's current focus is on the efficient production of nickel and cobalt using limonite, and other services previously provided by BHBP, including nickel mining, drying, equipment maintenance, and marketing. QNI is the largest privately held company in the Townswill area, with 1,000 employees. All workers and management are transferred from BHBP, so the production team is stable. Nickel products are the main source of income, mainly sold to stainless steel plants. According to the current nickel price, the annual income is about 600 million US dollars. According to the current cobalt price, the cobalt revenue is about 80 million US dollars, so the cobalt output value accounts for Yabru. 10% to 15% of total sales revenue.

Fourth, the craft of Yabru

QNI buys laterite nickel ore from New Caledonia, Indonesia and the Philippines, which is about 3.5 million tons per year, containing 1.5% nickel, 0.15% cobalt, 35% to 40% iron, and about 30% to 35% humidity. These mines are shipped back every 1 to 1.5 weeks, with a loading capacity of about 4 to 50,000 tons per shipment.

The mine was unloaded at the designated warehouse at Townswill Port and then shipped to the Yabru refinery. After being transported to the factory, the mines are stacked in the open air and dried naturally in the dry climate of the Townswill area. Next, the mines are transported to the rotary rafts for further drying and further comminution. The milled ore is calcined in a reducing atmosphere prior to smelting and extracting nickel and cobalt by ammonia soaking.

After that, it enters the metal refining stage of the back end.

The leachate containing a large amount of nickel and cobalt is subjected to several filtration and impurity removal processes, and the cobalt is finally extracted and separated in the ammonia solution. It is worth mentioning that this part of the factory process is the main reason we call the modified Caron method. The solvent extraction plant uses ammonia to replace the traditional acid extraction metal. This method was invented by QNI itself and is produced at present. The first step in QNI cobalt products.

After the ASX loop, the purified nickel solution is distilled and separated into nickel carbonate, and nickel oxide is formed in the rotary kiln, and finally reduced to metallic nickel, and the cobalt liquid is sent to the cobalt branch for further processing.

V. QNI Cobalt Products

Prior to 1988, QNI's cobalt production was mainly sold in the form of mixed nickel-cobalt sulfides, which were mainly sold as cobalt sulfide during the period 1989-1997 and subsequently sold as QNI grade cobalt products. Since 1986, QNI has begun to gradually use imported nickel ore. Since 1995, all imported nickel ore has been used. Since 1995, QNI's cobalt production has increased significantly, mainly because of the high content of cobalt in imported nickel ore, which is higher than the depleted local mine Greenvale.

During the period from 2005 to 2008, the handling capacity of nickel refineries decreased significantly, and QNI shifted its attention to the expansion of refineries. As mentioned earlier, QNI processes 3.5 million tons of nickel ore per year, containing 0.1% cobalt and about 3,500 tons of wet-base cobalt metal. Therefore, the recovery of cobalt is only about 50%. In 2009, QNI imported some nickel mines with higher cobalt content and increased the recovery rate of cobalt. Therefore, QNI's cobalt production in 2010 is expected to reach 2,200 tons.

In 1974, when QNI was first put into production, it produced impure nickel-cobalt sulfide, which contained 28% nickel and 14% cobalt. In 1989, when the ammonia leaching production line was first introduced to Yabru, the impure cobalt sulphide intermediate product was produced into 40% cobalt and 2% nickel, but faced a series of problems, cobalt purity, environmental protection, limited Customer base, discount on market price, etc.

At the beginning of 1990, QNI began a series of projects to overcome these problems and gradually formed the idea of ​​producing cobalt final products.

After years of research and marketing in the laboratory, QNI decided to produce purified chemical raw materials instead of pursuing traditional metal cobalt production lines.

Two years before the QNI-grade cobalt production line was fully completed and put into production, in 1995, QNI established a satellite factory, which was completely completed in 1996. The plant has been in operation since then.

QNI grade cobalt is mainly composed of cobalt hydroxide and cobalt sulphate. This product is produced from purified cobalt ammonia solution vapor. So far, no company has produced and sold this product. The shape of the product is black powder, which can replace some applications that require the dissolution of metallic cobalt, such as cobalt sulfate/cobalt chloride/cobalt nitrate, cobalt hydroxide, cobalt oxalate and cobalt oxide. It can be economically converted to tricobalt tetraoxide at a high temperature above 300 °C. It can also be used to dye pearlite, electronic components and magnetic materials.

Sixth, the future

It has been producing QNI grade cobalt from QNI for almost 12 years, and will continue to produce this product in the future and increase some production by increasing the recovery rate. As mentioned earlier, Yabru has a capacity of 75,000 tons of nickel, of which 45,000 tons of Raventhorpe is currently idle. If it can find suitable intermediate products for this part of the idle capacity, the cobalt output will be corresponding. It can also increase 1000 to 1500 tons.

As for the cobalt market itself, nickel producers will also play an important role in the supply chain, so cobalt production will continue to increase steadily in the next few years. This is a very positive news for cobalt consumers, and nickel producers will also be a stable long-term supplier to the cobalt industry, and this will help the cobalt consumer industry develop more cobalt-containing materials.

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