Atlantic Nickel sells first shipment of Nickel from Santa Rita mine

Atlantic Nickel, an Appian Brazil company, has made its first nickel concentrate sale from the Santa Rita mine, located in the municipality of Itagibá, in southern Bahia. The shipment of 10,000 tons should take place between January 15 and 25, per availability at the port of Ilhéus. The nickel was sold to Trafigura, one of the largest metal trading companies in the world. As part of the long-term agreement Atlantic Nickel will allocate part of its annual output to the trading company.

In exchange Trafigura is offering a loan of $40.8 million dollars, which will allow Atlantic Nickel to leverage its operations at the Santa Rita mine, which resumed in October 2019. Paulo Castellari, CEO of Appian Brazil, an arm of the Private Equity Appian Capital Advisory fund said, “This is a milestone for our company and it shows the technical excellence of our team which has been able to, safely and responsibly, orchestrate our return to commercial production months ahead of schedule”.

The fund acquired 100% of the mining company in 2018, when it was still known as Mirabela. After making investments in the processing plants, equipment acquisition, and restructuring the Santa Rita mine, Atlantic Nickel has resumed operations. The sale is just the first offtake agreement that Appian has sought to establish since the growing demand for sulphide nickel.

Atlantic Nickel’s expectations are to reach full production capacity of around 120,000 tons by December 2020. “I remain confident in the Santa Rita mine investment. With a low operational cost and a long lifespan, the mine has great potential and we believe in the benefits that will come from the growing electric vehicle industry, in which nickel is vital,” says Paulo Castellari.

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