https://portalcanaa.com.br/site/mineracao/mirabela-pode-retomar-p...

https://portalcanaa.com.br/site/mineracao/mirabela-pode-retomar-producao-de-niquel-neste-ano/amp/

Mirabela Mineração do Brasil, which controls the Santa Rita nickel mine in Itagibá, may still be producing this year, said Wesley Faustino, Administrative and Financial Director of Companhia Baiana de Pesquisa Mineral (CBPM), in an interview with a radio station in Ubatã (BA).

The director stated that the suspension of production of sulphide nickel concentrate occurred in April 2016, seven years after the mine was inaugurated. "The crisis in the international price of nickel tonne caused the suspension," Faustino said.

Yesterday nickel was quoted at $ 13,000 a tonne on the spot market on the London Metal Exchange (LME). This is the highest value achieved by this basic metal since June 2015. The miner stopped production in June 2016, when the metal was quoted at around US $ 9,100 a tonne shortly after Mirabela Nickel, the parent company was liquidated.

Creditors, in particular the Resource Capital Fund (RCF) that took over the company's assets, have set up a Canadian holding company to restructure the miner. According to the RCF website, the fund has 166 mining companies in its portfolio, including Ausenco and Talon Metals, which has assets in Brazil.

According to Faustino, in 2010, the first year of production, the price was $ 22 thousand dollars per ton and in April 2016, the time of the suspension of production, around 9,600 dollars, a fall of 56 %. "This has compromised the economic outcome of the operation," he says, according to local media.

Faustino says that the resumption of production is conditional on the recovery of the international price and the change of the main shareholders of the American company. Faustino would have said that "everything going well, still in the second half of 2018, the Santa Rita mine must resume the operation." In January last year, the director of Mirabela Mineração, Milson Mundim, said that the miner cou