Nickel

Nickel is mainly used to make stainless steel: it adds strength and corrosion resistance to the steel. With its ability to handle high temperatures, nickel features in specialty steels and superalloys found in jet engines, as an example. Nickel compounds are used in batteries – increasingly so in the electric vehicles helping facilitate our transition to a low-carbon economy.

Nickel is a part of our everyday lives, and a metal that we will increasingly need for a sustainable future. It is all around us, from the utensils we use in our kitchens to the bridges that connect our cities. Yet many people do not even notice its presence because it is a ‘hidden’ metal. Let us explore the extraordinary journey of nickel.

We are proud of our employees who uphold our Purpose and Values ​​to responsibly source these products. This responsibility takes many forms. Safety is one of our top priorities in the workplace.

Most recently, in May 2024, Fraser Mine, part of our Sudbury INO, was awarded the 2023 John T. Ryan National Trophy for Metal Mines for the best safety performance in Canada from the Canadian Institute of Mining, Metallurgy and Petroleum (CIM).

Beyond safety, an obvious way we uphold our Purpose to responsibly source the commodities that advance everyday life is through recycling.

We recycle a wide variety of complex end-of-life electronics to extract a range of metals (including nickel, gold, silver and others), helping support a circular supply chain that gives a second life to products that might otherwise be sent to landfill.

Today, our Nickel Department is one of the world’s largest processors of secondary nickel and cobalt bearing materials, including super alloy scrap, battery materials, plating residues and spent catalysts. The secondary materials processed at Sudbury INO are then further refined at our Nikkelverk refinery in Norway where they become finished products with purities amongst the highest in the world.

We’ve been mining nickel-copper ores in the Sudbury area of northern Ontario since 1929 and in the extreme north of Quebec when Raglan Mine went into production in 1997. Capital approvals for the Onaping Depth Project and Sivumut Project were granted in 2017 at Sudbury INO and Raglan Mine, respectively.

We are currently investing almost $2 billion, which delivered the Sivumut Project at Raglan Mine in 2024 ($600M) and in the ongoing construction of the Onaping Depth Project in Sudbury ($1.3B), which will extend the life of these mines until at least 2035. We also have several prospective exploration activities ongoing at both sites.

We invite you to understand the innovation and imagination which brought our Anuri Mine, part of the Sivumut Project, to life and is driving the Onaping Depth Project forward in the following videos.