Nickel Asia Corp. (NAC) is boosting its production at its Cagdianao mine site by 10 percent with expected improvement in nickel prices as Indonesia starts implementing a nickel export ban.
“For 2020, the budget (production) for Cagdianao is 3 million wet metric tons (WMT). We’ll add about 300,000 (WMT) next year,” NAC Vice-President for Operations Aloysius C. Diaz was quoted in a BusinessWorld report.
The mine site is in Barangay Valencia, municipality of Cagdianao, Dinagat Islands in the CARAGA region. The mine can produce as much as 5 million WMT of nickel, which is used for the production of stainless steel.
“The improved prices due to the ban to be imposed on Indonesian nickel ore export by the Indonesian government, and of course we have to increase productivity of our CMC (Cagdiano Mining Corp.) team,” Diaz said.
Starting January 1 next year, Indonesia will implement its nickel ore export ban.
Diaz said the company aims to have additional seven shipments this year. This has an average of 53,500 WMT per vessel or a total of 374,500 WMT, bringing expected production this year at 2.728 WMT.
“The Cagdianao mine will be ahead by seven shipments this year, compared to 44 shipments scheduled for this year. Cagdianao will make about 51 shipments this year,” he said.
China gets the 1.55 percent ore grade or medium-grade ore, while the 1.7 ore grade are exported to Japan.
“We have to improve our bottomline because the opportunity presented itself. We had improved productivity and the price of our product also improved,” Diaz noted.
NAC reported a 48 percent decrease in its attributable net income for the first half of the year due to foreign exchange losses.
The company’s earnings dropped to P713.75 million, from P1.39 billion it booked in the same period last year.
Revenues increased by 1.14 percent to P7.46 billion during the January to June period.
Around 9.08 million WMT of nickel ore were sold by NAC during the first half of the year, which is a 2 percent increase from last year’s 8.89 million WMT.
