BRASILIA – Brazilian miner Vale said on Tuesday it approved payment of a dividend instalment of 3.1-billion reais ($1.01-billion), easing investor concerns that it might slash the payment in the face of falling iron-ore prices.
Read more at: http://m.miningweekly.com/article/brazils-vale-approves-1bn-dividend-payment-2015-04-15
Nickel demand from the auto industry is set to rise as much as threefold in five years as output of electric and hybrid cars gathers pace, according to Russia’s largest producer of the metal.
“Hybrid and electric cars make more demand for nickel,” Anton Berlin, head of strategic marketing at OAO GMK Norilsk Nickel, said in an interview in Moscow. “It will rise because many automobile companies, such as Tesla Motors, have very ambitious plans for the future.”
Read more at: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-04-13/norilsk-sees-nickel-use-in-cars-tripling-as-tesla-drives-sales
The president of the New Caledonian government, Philippe Germain, has proposed talks to boost the government’s stake in the mining company Societe Le Nickel or SLN to 51% of its capital.
New Caledonia’s three provinces currently hold 34% of SLN and 4% of its parent company Eramet.
Read more at: http://www.radionz.co.nz/international/pacific-news/271124/new-caledonia-president-wants-bigger-stake-in-nickel-mining
The government has asked state-controlled diversified miner PT Aneka Tambang (Antam) to accelerate its downstream projects to help provide more added value mineral products to the country.
Speaking to reporters following a meeting with the company’s board of directors in Jakarta on Friday, State-Owned Enterprises (SOEs) Minister Rini Soemarno said the company should carefully prepare its downstream projects so no projects would be delayed.
See more at: http://m.thejakartapost.com/news/2015/04/11/antam-told-speed-downstream-projects.html#sthash.TjrRBP2z.dpuf
Mick Davis is considering buying a Toronto-listed mining company as the former Xstrata Plc chief executive officer eyes fresh targets for his $5.6 billion war chest, according to two people familiar with his plans.
A deal in Canada could be a prelude to the bigger acquisition he’s been seeking for some time, the people said, who asked not to be identified because the deliberations are private. Davis’s X2 Resources is weighing an eventual bid for South32 Ltd., the miner being spun off next month by BHP Billiton Ltd. that’s been the subject of takeover speculation, they said.
Read more at: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-04-10/ex-xstrata-ceo-davis-said-to-close-in-on-canada-based-miners
H.C. Starck also plans to grow its tantalum and niobium powder business during the 2015 fiscal year. ‘We will reinforce our leading market position with innovative products for new industries, along with a revised business model for capacitor powders,’ said Meier. In addition, the company plans to position its tantalum and niobium powder business more broadly outside the electronics industry.
Read more at: http://www.metal-powder.net/view/41974/h-c-starck-in-2014-increased-sales-despite-weak-market-development/
The researchers fabricated the spintronics devices at the Nano fabrication laboratory at Chalmers University of Technology. From left: Saroj Prasad Dash, Venkata Kamalakar Mutta and André Dankert. Credit: Oscar MattssonResearchers at Chalmers University of Technology have discovered that large area graphene is able to preserve electron spin over an extended period, and communicate it over greater distances than had previously been known. This has opened the door for the development of spintronics, with an aim to manufacturing faster and more energy-efficient memory and processors in computers. The findings will be published in the journal Nature Communications
Read more at: http://m.phys.org/news/2015-04-graphene-future-spintronic-devices.html
Apr 09, 2015 — Today Intel announced the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Argonne Leadership Computing Facility has awarded Intel Federal LLC, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Intel Corporation, a contract to deliver two next-generation supercomputers at Argonne National Laboratory. Designed and built in partnership with Cray Inc., the system, to be called Aurora, will be based on Intel’s high performance computing (HPC) scalable system framework and Cray’s next-generation “Shasta” supercomputer. Aurora will be delivered in 2018 and have a peak performance of 180 petaFLOPS, making it the largest system currently procured worldwide. This contract is part of the DOE’s initiative to build state-of-the-art supercomputers at Argonne, Lawrence Livermore and Oak Ridge National Laboratories that will help advance U.S. leadership in scientific research and position it at the forefront of next generation exascale computing for years to come.
MOSCOW (Reuters) – Russia plans to extend a 6.5-percent export tax, currently set on platinum group metal ingots and sponge to other, related products, Interfax news agency quoted Vladimir Potanin, Norilsk Nickel’s (GMKN.MM) chief executive, as saying on Thursday.
Read more at: http://in.mobile.reuters.com/article/idINKBN0N024820150409?irpc=932
A Blog for Browsing Mining, Mineral Processing, and Metals Info 