Atlantic Nickel will ship its first sale of nickel concentrate from its Santa Rita mine in Bahia, Brazil later this month. The company booked a sale of 9,071mt to Trafigura and the shipment will take place between Jan 15 and 25.
Atlantic Nickel was acquired by Brazil’s Appian Capital Advisory in 2018 when it was known as Mirabela. Soon after the acquisition, the company resumed nickel production and secured a three-year off-take contract with Trafigura for a portion of Santa Rita’s production and a $40.8mn financing arrangement.
With global demand growing for sulfide nickel, the company plans to produce around 109,000mt of concentrate by December.
Operations at Santa Rita, which is a fully permitted nickel producing mine, were halted in October 2015 due to low nickel prices. The mine has an estimated production capacity of 6.5mn tonnes of nickel in sulphide concentrate.
Atlantic Nickel has achieved several operational milestones since blasting restarted that include a complete refurbishment and a ramp-up in commissioning activities that led to an early production of nickel concentrate.