Intro => Amir

Présentation de la problèmatique, secteur choisi, présentation des auteurs, méthode choisie pour l’étude.
Jérémie secteur energie
Ludovic – Métaux (aluminium – acier)
Airy – Métaux (acier)
Amir – Emballage

Nickel sector presentation :

Nickel is a very particular material, even in the genesis of its name. By paying attention, we can recognize the “old nick”. German miners found very strange, diabolic the fact they couldn’t isolate this metal, associated for them with copper !
The nickel industry belongs to the sector of commodities. Indeed Nickel is a non ferrous metal used as alloying element for stainsless steel mainly (60 to 65%)[ref 1,2], then other alloys (22%) [3], electroplating (8%) [3], chemicals (5%) [3] and batteries. Although nickel is largely present on earth, at the 5th position in term of abundancy, the mineable resources are limited. The production is concentrated today in several country: Russia, France through Neo-Caledonia, Canada, Australia, Cuba. In 2007, the production of primary Nickel was 1.454.000tm [2], for a demand estimated at 1.32 million tonnes [1]. 6 major companies (NORILSK-22%-, CVRD/INCO-21%-, BHP-13%-, XSTRATA-11%-, JINCHUAN-9%-, ERAMET-7%-) are responsible for 83% of the world production.

Classically the nickel is extracted from sulfide nickel ore deposits. For 2006, nickel laterites use has been developed to balance the supply and demand, as shown in the graph 1 below.

[pic]
Graph 1 : Nickel supply versus Consumption
Source http://www.estainlesssteel.com/stainlesssteelandnickelcharts.shtml

One of the key point of this mining industry is that an increase of the supply is only possible through large investment and several years, up to 10-15, after the project launch [5]

As many other materials, nickel price is available on a daily basis via the London Metal Exchange, the world’s premier non ferrous metals market. The LME manages also a certain amount of nickel stockpile, buying some