New Caledonia

2010 - Name changed to Vale Nouvelle-Calédonie S.A.S.
2008 - Name changed to Vale Inco New Caledonia S.A.S.
        - Vale Inco Nouvelle-Calédonie S.A.S.

Vale Inco (74%)
Sumic Nickel Netherland B.V. (21%)
la Société de Participation Minière du Sud Calédonien or SPMSC (5%)

April 26, 2010 - Vale said on Monday that it had partially halted commissioning work at its already delayed Goro nickel operation in New Caledonia following an acid spill.  Vale Inco spokesman Cory McPhee said the company was investigating the spill of 690 cubic metres of acid-containing solution. He said the spill had been "contained", and had caused no injuries or damage to the external environment.  The project, which is expected to eventually produce 60,000 tonnes of nickel a year, has been repeatedly delayed over the past 18 months. Part of that delay was due to a smaller acid spill a year ago which made it into the outside environment.   The company said last week that it was getting closer to production, but had been delayed due to "hiccups" in the commissioning.  McPhee declined to speculate on how the spill might impact the timeline.  "It's too early for us to speculate on that," he said.  "This just happened. We just want to make sure we're diligent and looking at what took place so we understand why and to prevent it from happening in the future," he said.  He said commissioning had been stopped in the extraction unit where the spill occurred, but was continuing elsewhere.  The $4.3 billion project, located in the French island territory of New Caledonia in the South Pacific, has been closely watched as it is one of a new breed of large nickel laterite mines that are expected to account for a growing proportion of global nickel supply.

Goro Acid Spill Report

April 7, 2009 - Local associations and the Southern province of New Caledonia were in uproar at the weekend after it transpired last week that thousands of liters of sulphuric acid have accidentally been spilled into the environment, killing thousands of fauna and flora species, reports Oceania Flash.  The incident was reported to have occurred on Wednesday last week at the construction site of the huge nickel mining project driven by Brazilian giant Vale, in the south of the main island, near Goro.  But the major spill — of an estimated one to five thousand liters of sulphuric acid, especially in the nearby river — only became public later in the week.  The nickel mining site was scheduled to be commissioned later this year and the spill resulted from preliminary tests conducted in the past few months, ahead of the commissioning.  Southern province President Philippe Gomès, who went to the scene on Friday, expressed anger at the accident, saying on at least two grounds, this was not acceptable on the part of Vale-Goro, because it was infringing of the company’s obligations.  Gomès said one of those grounds was that it seemed Vale-Goro had manufactured thousands of liters of acid, which is the basis chosen for the extraction process of nickel, even before a buffer pool aimed at avoiding such incidents was completed.  As a result, the whole of the acid, leaked from what has been described as a faulty pipe connection, went straight into the environment, which is already globally recognized for its biodiversity.   Vale-Goro technicians later managed to neutralize high acidity levels, but environment organizations said the damage had been done already.  Gomès also expressed anger at the fact that Southern province authorities were only notified of the spill nearly thirty hours after the disaster occurred.  “It’s like bringing back the water temperature from 100 degrees Celsius to 20 degrees Celsius. You can do that, but it’s too late,” World Wildlife Fund local representative Hubert Géraux told local media, adding this was tantamount to an “environment disaster.”   Last year, in the same region, New Caledonia’s lagoons received world recognition from the United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural organization and saw this site added to the list of Natural World Heritage places.  As a precautionary measure, the Southern Province of New Caledonia, which issued the permits for Goro’s operations, has announced it was pursuing the matter in court, but is also from now on and until further notice placing a ban of the production of acid.  New Caledonia hold about a quarter of the world’s known nickel ore reserves.  The Vale-Goro plant is scheduled, when in full production, to reach a yearly capacity of some sixty thousand tons of nickel and five thousand tons of cobalt.  It represents a capital investment of over $2 billion.

October 26, 2009 - An analyst says one of the biggest mining projects in the world, New Caledonia’s Vale-Inco, could be in for a rough start should production begin next year.  The nickel plant is now expected to be up and running by January.  The launch has been delayed several times due to technical problems, including a huge spill at its sulphuric acid plant, which is now being re-designed.  A senior analyst at Ord Minnett in Australia, Peter Arden, says there’s currently a surplus of nickel on the market.  “We’ve seen a significant build up of stockpiles of nickel. And we have not only the New Caledobia project about to start, but there are two other projects also which are building up, one in PNG the other in Brazil, that will also impact on this saturated supply, so we’re quite intrigued that the nickel price held up as it has.”   Peter Arden says the current market seems to be in denial of that fact, but a slump in price is expected next year.