It’s been a busy start to the past few months of the year for FPX Nickel (TSXV:FPX) thanks to some recent developments that will have investors paying attention.
Case in point, in early September the company announced results from a prefeasibility study at the Baptiste Nickel Project in British Columbia, while later in the month it notched a battery supply chain memorandum of understanding (MOU) with several key players in the space.
Supply chain MOU details
In a press release on Sept. 22, FPX Nickel revealed it signed the MOU with Japan Organization for Metals and Energy Security (JOGMEC) and the Prime Planet Energy and Solutions (PPES) joint venture between Toyota Motor Company and Panasonic Corporation.
The company said the MOU will offer a framework for FPX and PPES to explore collaborative opportunities to integrate nickel production from FPX’s Baptiste Nickel Project. This may include the production of nickel sulphate and cathode active materials for PPES’s supply chain.
“We are pleased to initiate this MOU with PPES and JOGMEC, two groups leading the global transition to a low-carbon, electrified economy,” Martin Turenne, CEO of FPX Nickel, said in a statement. “This MOU demonstrates the strategic nature of the Baptiste Project and its potential to produce an ideal nickel feedstock for the battery supply chain.”
FPX Nickel entered into a global generative exploration alliance with JOGMEC back in April that is being funded solely by JOGMEC. The alliance’s purpose is to carry out mineral exploration activities worldwide to identify and acquire high-quality nickel properties.
The Baptiste Nickel Project prefeasibility study
Located in central British Columbia, the Baptiste Nickel Project lies in the 100 per cent owned flagship Decar Nickel District and represents a grassroots discovery of a new nickel deposit type.
The company’s results from the preliminary prefeasibility study demonstrate the potential to develop a high-margin, long-life, large-scale and low-carbon mine with the flexibility to produce a high-grade concentrate of 60 per cent nickel for direct feed into the stainless-steel industry.
The FPX nickel product also has the potential to be refined into battery-grade sulphate, cobalt precipitate and copper concentrate products for the battery material supply chain.
“The PFS firmly establishes Baptiste as a key strategic asset in the development of Canada’s critical minerals supply chain,” Turenne said in a statement. “Despite the inflationary pressures observed in the mining industry in recent years, the study has yielded after-tax NPV and IRR superior to those observed in the 2020 preliminary economic assessment, reflecting greater engineering maturity and incorporating the several optimizations identified by our class-leading project team in regard to resource modelling, mine planning, process recovery and site design.”
The investment corner
Nickel is a hot commodity thanks to its continued adoption in EV batteries. Nickel boosts the energy within an EV battery and increases drivable range, which will no doubt continue fueling its demand moving forward.
By 2025, it is estimated that global demand for nickel in EV batteries will total 665,000 tons worldwide, up from just 60,000 tons in 2018.
With such high demand for the metal, companies such as FPX Nickel could be game changers in the space.
Thanks to its high-value clean nickel product, which bypasses smelters to achieve high payability, resulting in a low-carbon footprint, FPX Nickel is leading the development of the next generation of green nickel. Additionally, FPX’s ideal location in the Decar Nickel District gives it the potential for multiple large-scale nickel deposits, which will be integral in the shift towards green energy.
As it currently stands the company has a market capitalization of C$116 million and a share price of $0.43 – making it attractively valued compared to its peers, and one such opportunity investors won’t want to miss out on.
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