welcome to CEO insights I'm Marilyn Guzman with investing News Network I'm speaking with Stuart harshaw CEO and president of Nickel Creek Platinum an exploration and development company in Canada focused on niichel hi Stuart how are you today good good to see you exellent excellent right so we're talking about nickel I guess we can start over our just to launch our conversation can you sort of talk about the current supply and demand landscape for nickel absolutely I mean uh nickel is


one of the smaller commodity markets of the of the of the bigger base Metals um so it's sort of in that say 3,000 metric tons a year uh it's 3 million metric tones a year it kind of goes up and down a bit there um but essentially the supply side has been really dominated for the last 10 years about from Indonesia and the uh if you will the non sulfide ore if it's a laterite so it's an oxide and that's really made up almost 100% of all the growth in the nickel Market in the last 10


years the mining in Indonesia Philippines and new calonia for instance um so that supply has been you know you know fairly robust it went through a period there during Co where they were having some difficulty expanding and so there was a Slowdown on on the ability to expand uh th those projects uh that they were putting in the other side of it is demand so the demand of nickel has been one that has grown at sort of a say two and a half to 3% rate every year for the last 50 years um it's dominated by


stainless steel uh stainless steel as everybody knows it's got many uses um you see it in your kitchens you see it uh where you know in construction C sites Etc um what we're actually seeing from a demand side in the last few years is really being the electric vehicle uh you know Evolution and and really with the entire world getting on this lower carbon footprint associated with electric vehicles and that's really been the new demand so so I would say nickel is is a conversation of those two um uh


if you will competing uh entities uh Supply out of out of Indonesia and and and higher and higher demand for the EV battery market right so with that right so with that rapidly emerging EV sector um you know about 70% already uh of the world's vle production is being consumed in the steel industry but now with this emerging EV sector obviously Supply is going to be increasing more and more uh can you talk about more and you you know you've mentioned you know some on the where the supplies are coming from right


now but where where are the other prospects for where the suppliers coming from can you talk a bit more about this shifting dynamic in terms of uh demand for um nickel and where the supply will be coming from yeah absolutely so the thing about electric vehicles and and Battery Technology so nickel has been a dominant uh you know participant in that industry for many years nickel metal hydride many years ago and really the lithium battery which has significant nickel as part of the lithium batteries


um there is different battery technologies so the growth rate of that EV kind of world will be uh you know evolving over time but it's a very strong demand and it's growing rapidly um I've heard Automotive companies talk about a 100,000 tons of nickel needed per year in order to meet the the battery requirements um you times up by 12 of them and you got a lot of nickel required um the the challenge is it's got to be very highgrade nickel so this is nickel that is is not can't not


comparable to if you will the fair nickel and other nickel sources that go into stainless for instance it's got to be high Purity and this High Purity has really been dominated by the sulfide world and the sulfide world uh you know has been shrinking for the last 10 years as the dominance of from from the laterite world in Indonesia um the latest project in Indonesia are are looking at trying to put in h pal techn Hydro um so it's High Press acid leech technology um where they can actually


take a laterite nickel and make a pure form for it and that has really been the thrust of of some of the newer kind of uh production out of Indonesia uh but it is very high carbon very high it's all based on cool fired power it's got a big impact to the planet and when you actually align that with the EV world it's not a good alignment the EV world is about lowering our carbon footprint lowering you know making us cleaner and and and world if you and that isn't the nickel that's going to do it and that's


really what we're starting to see is that that understanding of where the nickel come froms is important an atom isn't an atom it's what is is done in order to to to produce that atom is it a matter of then um looking for newer sources of nickel you know to feed this going demand or or is it technology like how where is that new uh T kind of nickel or the higher grade nickel will come from yeah the the I think the the key is the lower carbon footprint nickel really and that's the


sulfide world and in the the reason for that is the sulfide world uh is the separation uh process utilizes a lot of the energy from The Ore itself in terms of the sulfur contained adds energy to the to the source if you take a look at new projects such as uh Nickel Creek Platinum um what we have is a situation where we actually produce uh it's called through carbon sequesteration we actually produce a very very low carbon footprint nickel because we absorb carbon dioxide as part of our our tailings process so the tailings and and


waste rock will actually absorb carbon dioxide it net result is a very low carbon nickel so they so when you actually ask where the nickel's going to come from the sulfide world is looking for nickel and the nickel is going to come from what I could would say is lower grade uh nickel deposits because we found almost all of the high grain Niel you know that that's the challenge that we have right uh um the laterites are are fulfilling a very important need of of supplying significant nickel for


the stainless but the challenge we we have is we need to bring these new sulfide projects into into play that have this low carbon footprint and can feed into the uh the EV market right that's probably a good uh this a probably good time to talk about your project as you mentioned Nichol Shaw could you uh talk a bit more about this project and how you see your company and this project playing this whole you know dynamic of the increased nickel demand um and you know increasing Supply yeah no absolutely so projects like uh Nickel


Creek we were very large uh so so in terms of uh you know we would be a 45,000 ton per day Mill type operation so it's a very large operation uh producing significant nickel for a long time so these are you know 20 30 year plus time frames of producing nickel which is really important in terms of when you put in the infrastructure for a project you want to have long vity when you spend the the effort the time putting infrastructure in for these projects um we can we we actually because of the lowc carbon footprint the


ability to go you know directly into to smelting technology where you produce pure nickel that is suitable for the EV Market we are really a natural for the next phase of of of uh the nickel market and when I say the next phase it's really you know as we all know commodity is it's it's all pric so so you know projects like ours require prices to bring uh us into production those prices are are something that you know we would prefer it to be you know nice even slope to getting to that price but what


typically happens with commodity Market is it doesn't you know the prices don't shift enough until the market recognizes that they're going to be short and really that's where we're sitting right now a lot of people's expectations are that the nickel is going to be satisfied from Indonesia but it's actually not going to be enough nickel for the over the next decade and it takes you know five years for projects to actually get into you know five to 10 years depending on the project so our goal with Nickel


Creek is to get ourself ready for that which means we take we've done our our PFS a pre-feasibility study and so the next phase is to do a feasibility study and start the permitting process such that you know when the market starts to really kind of shift and move because of the requirement for nickel we have a project that's ready uh you know to be developed and and to help satisfy that right and I guess another side of that is you know Investments um in nickel so you know uh compared to the other more


popular I guess more uh in uh I guess more popular battery Metals such as copper and lithium um are you seeing more more uh investor interest increasing in nickel like what are you seeing from the investor Community out there when it comes to ni nickel yeah I'd say right now in this current world that we have the investor community and and almost everything is kind of very cautious right now I would say as a time period there's U you know there's unrest in the world wars there's uncertainty around


you know you know recessions and different things have been baned around I would say a lot of investors are are hesit ating right now in terms of from a overall commodity um when you actually look at us about a say you know a year year and a half ago if you look at the nickel industry there was a lot more you know um interest in and focus on it I'd say in the last year things are kind of slowed down as people try to understand just how fast are the EV Market's going to expand what's the requirement going


to be over the you know the you know the short term if you will um and so I would say that there's a generally a good interest for nickel that people understand the requirement for nickel but I think there's a little bit of wait and see for this in the short term and you're starting to you see that in the market the prices come off there's been some Supply announcements coming out of Indonesia and people are talking about the you know Surplus in the market after having gone through deficits for for a


few years um so that I think there's a bit of a wait and see attitude uh when it comes to nickel from an investment point of view which really brings us to the challenge that I've always said is that the the problem is you know when you want the nickel it's going to be a five to seven year process and it's too late um so we're I you know that this is really the you know it's a concern I have for overall for for in general that it really shifts the price significantly um which is never in the best interest


of everybody it's better to have a nice steady price increase but I would say that uh we're we're kind of leading ourselves up for a very heft price swing at some point in the in the not too distant future and so if you're speaking to an investor right now why should they specifically look at Nickel Creek um when considering you know getting into the nickel space yeah yeah so for for me the what you want is people that are highly leveraged to the upswing of nickel price so that means you're large


you have a large volume uh you have that capability to when the price does swing you represent a significant uh Delta if you will uh because of that um so looking at something like Nickel Creek we've got not just nickel the the benefit of a Nickel Creek is we have the you know copper and Cobalt which are also critical Metals as well as platinum and plaum and I know there's a you know there's a lot of conversations about uh you know platinum and plaum in in the market in terms of the EVS replacing the


you know the platinum plaum and autocatalyst but the focus for for me is those metals are becoming increasingly difficult to get out of to South Africa and Russia and so really from a geopolitical risk we represent a significant opportunity on the Platinum plaum um as a byproduct to the Nick so so really it it means that every ton we're bringing out of the ground is worth more money because these byproducts so it's a good time to invest in companies like uh like Nickel Creek Platinum where when the Market's low you


want to invest in in us right that's that's the key you want to invest in our type of projects now um not when the nickel Market's gone crazy and our you know things are already kind of moved on if you will so this is the time to do it great well thanks again for joining me and sharing your insights today St great well thank you for having me and I appreciate the opportunity to talk about it great and thanks everyone for watching join us again next time for another engaging conversation on CEO


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