London — DMCI Mining plans to restart mining this year at its Berong nickel project in the Philippine province of Palawan after the lifting of a suspension order by the country's environment and natural resources authorities last November.
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Register NowDMCI president Cesar Simbulan also said 2019 would remain tough for the nickel miner as it will be shipping mostly lower-grade ore.
DMCI has nearly depleted selling higher-grade ore inventory in the past two years after Manila suspended Berong Nickel in mid-2016 and closed DMCI's second nickel operation Zambales Diversified Metals over environmental violations in Feb 2017.
DMCI shipped 643,000 wmt of nickel ore in 2018, up 22% from 2017. The average nickel grade of the shipments rose 13% to 1.7%.
The average grade of nickel ore shipments this year will be around 1.57%.
According to the Philippine Mines and Geosciences Bureau, Berong Nickel's output was 867,817 wmt in 2015, then 341,190 wmt in 2016.
-- Winnie Lee, newsdesk@spglobal.com
-- Edited by Dan Lalor, daniel.lalor@spglobal.com