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BHP Billiton reduces nickel exposure with sale
03.07.09
BHP Billiton today sold its Yabulu nickel refinery in Australia as it retreated further from high-cost nickel operations.
The future of Yabulu has been in doubt since January when BHP shut its Ravensthorpe nickel mine in Western Australia that supplied the refinery with the raw materials to process into nickel and cobalt.
Buyer Clive Palmer, a local mining magnate, said Ravensthorpe will not be restarted to supply ore to the Yabulu refinery. Palmer, who made his fortune in the 1980s from the property boom on Queensland's Gold Coast, plans to keep running Yabulu on nickel ores from mines in New Caledonia, Indonesia and the Philippines.
"Yabulu has a 30,000-tonnes-per-year nickel-making capacity for ore from the Pacific region and that's where we are leaving it for now," said Palmer, who paid an undisclosed sum.
