News

June 23, 2008

European Nickel Goes Global

By Alastair Ford

There’ll be no change of name at European Nickel, although one has been mooted, but there can be no doubt either that, following recent moves into the Philippines, the company has gone truly global. Over a nice bit of fish in a pub around the corner from his Mayfair office, European Nickel chief Simon Purkiss, marks on a map for Minesite’s edification the locations of all the world’s known nickel laterite regions. There aren’t many of them – a few in Africa, one or two in the Caribbean and the north end of South America, one on the north west coast of North America, a big district in Central Asia, one in the north east of India, the central European deposits, and those in what in former times were known as the South Seas, including, at a stretch, New Caledonia. Between them all they host over 72 per cent of the world’s known nickel resources.

The map on which Mr Purkiss marks these regions has the rather intriguing title: “Our Growing Presence”, and it serves in European Nickel’s latest presentation, to illustrate current areas of operations. So far the list consists of Turkey, Albania, and the Philippines, and, again at a stretch, the UK, where the company has its head office.

Minesite gets the impression that a move into Africa could be next on Mr Purkiss’s list, though nothing so concrete is forthcoming from the man himself. He...