Reuters reported that the Philippines' biggest nickel miner, Nickel Asia Corporation expects its sales volumes to increase about 20% this year with about 60% of output going to China.

Mr Gerard Brimo president and CEO of Nickel Asia said that Nickel Asia, partly owned by Japan's Sumitomo Metal Mining Company Limited expects to sell about 10 million tonnes of ore this year, topping last year's record 8.3 million tonnes.

Mr Brimo said that China would take about 60% of the volume with the rest going to Japan and Nickel Asia's Coral Bay high pressure acid leach nickel processing facility. China has become a major stainless steel producer so there is a lot of demand for NPI and consequently, there is a lot of demand for the kind of ore that we have.

He said that that demand is not going to weaken anytime soon, we don't think. It's very strong. China accounts for over a third of global nickel consumption. The Philippines competes with Indonesia in Asia in nickel supply.

Mr Brimo said that the region in general is running low on the very high grade lateritic nickel ore, so there is more demand for medium grades we have plenty of that. So we see demand continuing very strong in the years ahead. The 33 year old company has controlling stakes in four Philippine nickel mines Rio Tuba, Taganito, Cagdianao and Taganaan mines.

He said that Nickel Asia was on track in the construction of its USD 1.4 billion Taganito hydrometallurgical nickel processing plant set to come on stream in the second half of 2013. The plant has an annual capacity of 30,000 tonnes contained nickel and 2,600 tonnes contained cobalt and is currently considered to be the single largest investment in the Philippine mining sector.

(Sourced from Reuters)