loo good reasons to celebrate Of all the companies that saw the early years of the last Century, only about a quarter are recognisable today - and some of those only by a brand name. lnco is one the select few that have won through loo turbulent years to celebrate its centenary. Chairman and Chief Executive Scott Hand says the company plans to be in business for a long time to come...

I T IS self evident that no compa- ny can survive without cus- tomers, so it’s good to have an

opportunity to thank our customers world wide for their loyalty. We have a long history of development together and there’s much to be excited about in the potential for new Into initiatives through the Special Products business unit.

As the world’s leading integrated producer of nickel, producing pow- ders from nickel originating from our own mines, we plan to remain a reli- able supplier for a very long time to come. And as the world leader in nickel technology, from mining through metals processing to new product development, we will con- tinue to contribute to further advances in the properties of powder metallurgy parts.

These days at Into, we’re think- ing a lot about the future. Over the next five to 10 years we will be bringing not one, but two of the world’s most important undevel- oped nickel ore bodies into com- mercial production.

On June 11, after long negotia- tions, we announced an agreement in Canada on a statement of principles with the government of Newfoundland and Labrador for development of our Voisey’s Bay nickel sulphide deposit in northern Labrador.

Voisey’s Bay is a US $1.9 billion, three-phase project that will bring a major new source of nickel concen- trate on stream by 2006, and a 50,000 tonne per year hydrometallurgical processing facility into production in Newfoundland by 2011.

Meanwhile, half a world away from Labrador, we’ve begun devel- oping our US $1.4 billion Goro nickel laterite project in the South

12 MPR July/August 2002

Scott M Hand, Chairman and CEO at INCO - Proud of the record over 100 years in the nickel business.

Sea islands of New Caledonia. Goro is scheduled to begin com- mercial production in late 2004, with a 54,000 tonne per year nickel processing plant that is now under construction.

Together, Voisey’s Bay and Goro will increase our overall nickel production by 40 per cent, and will significantly strengthen our posi- tion as the world’s most important nickel producer. We will also become the world’s largest miner of cobalt.

All this bodes well for our future. But this year at Into, we’re also tak- ing a long look back to our past; because this year, Into is celebrating its centenary.

In April 1902, with the financial help of US Steel, the International Nickel Company was formed from the merger of seven companies,

including New Jersey’s Orford Copper Company and the Canadian Copper Company.

By the time the Wright Brothers flew their shaky biplane at Kitty Hawk, this company was already one year old. That flight spawned a glob- al airline industry and today, Into nickel can be found in gas turbine engines in thousands of aircraft around the world.

Into nickel has landed on the moon. Into nickel was in Admiral Peary’s cook stove for his North Pole expedition, and Into nickel can be found in the huge valves originally installed in the Hoover Dam.

Our one hundred years have taken us around the world. Into today is a truly diverse, global com- pany, operating on four continents and mining in two hemispheres. The Into logo reaches from Clydach in Wales to the South Pacific with Goro in New Caledonia; from Sudbury, Ontario, to Thompson, Manitoba; from Shanghai, China to Tokyo, Japan, and from Indonesia to Taiwan.

Throughout our varied history a few features have remained con- stant + features that have defined us and been the backbone of our strength. Today, these remain key strengths for us and for the compa- nies who choose to do business with us.

One is the strength of our resource base. We found our roots near Sudbury with the westward expan- sion of the Canadian Pacific Railroad, when blacksmith Tom Flanagan detected copper sulphide in the right-of-way in the 1880s. That was the beginning of the discovery of the great ore body of the Sudbury basin.

0026-0657/02/B-see front matter 0 2002 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.

Over the past one hundred years, the Sudbury deposit has yielded 10 million tonnes of nickel and 9 mil- lion tonnes of copper. And it’s still going strong. New discoveries have ensured that Sudbury will keep on producing nickel for many years into the future.

Over the years, Into has added to its Sudbury base - first, with the dis- covery and development of our Thompson, Manitoba ore body in the 195Os, and later with the develop- ment of PT Into in Sorowako, Indonesia in the 1970s.

And now, we are on the verge of dramdticdlly expanding our produc- tion with the two new properties at Goro and at Voisey’s Bay. All told, we have the strongest portfolio of ore bodies of any nickel producer in the world. It is a strength that gives us great stability of supply as well as flex- ibility in feeding our world-wide pro- duction facilities to ensure we always have the right nickel form in the right part of the world at the right time.

A second Into strength has been technological innovation. An Into employee designed the first stain- less steel kitchen sink and it soon became the largest single applica- tion of nickel stainless steel in the world. We developed new nickel alloys for jet and gas turbine engines - in fact the very first jet engine was made with Into nickel. We have also led the development of remote-controlled underground mining -- technology we believe will be instrumental in the future of mining.

But perhaps our single most impor- tant innovation goes back to our ear- liest roots. And it is an innovation that has had special significance to our powder business.

Around the same time that ore was first discovered in Sudbury in the 188Os, a German-born chemist named Ludwig Mond was experi- menting in a laboratory he set up in a converted stable behind his home in the St. John’s Wood area of London.

Quite by accident, Mond and his assistant, Carl Langer, discovered that if carbon monoxide was passed over divided nickel, only nickel combined with the gas. And when it did so, they found that it pro- duced a previously unknown com- pound in a gaseous form. Mond found that by heating this gas - which he called nickel carbonyl - he could recover nickel in a very pure form.

Mond quickly grasped the com- mercial implications of his discov- ery. Ten years later, in 1900, after extensive experimentation, testing, and development, he began con- struction on The Mond Nickel Refinery in Clydach, Wales. In the summer of 1902 “The Mond” made its first deliveries of 99.95 per cent pure nickel, using the nickel car- bony1 process.

Coincidentally, that was the same year Into was incorporated. Which means that in 2002, besides celebrating the Into centennial, we are also celebrating the centennial

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www.metal-powder.net MPR )uly/August 2002 13

Sudbury, Ontario; ‘base camp’ for INCO and site of their first huge nickel ore discovery. The ore lode still has more production potential.

of the commercial use of the car- bony1 process at “The Mond” in Clydach, which became part of Into in 1929.

It’s a milestone that deserves spe- cial recognition. Nickel carbonyl refining has proven to be one of the most enduring, most successful industrial processes ever invented. It is still the core refining process used at the plant that Ludwig Mond founded in Clydach, as well as Into’s Copper Cliff Nickel Refinery in our Sudbury operations. This gives two sources of supply of these products. And the process remains one of Into’s most important com- petitive advantages.

But how does a process more than 100 years old still set the stan- dard for nickel refining? There are two reasons. One, it is very effi- cient. We operate at a massive

14 MPR July/August 2002

scale, with carbonyl nickel product capacity between our two refineries of 100,000 tonnes per year of nick- el. This allows us to use the inter- mediate carbonyl gas to directly produce a wide range of different nickel products, including nickel powders.

The carbonyl process has also proved remarkably adaptable in cre- ating new products that meet the changing demands of the nickel industry. And nowhere is this more true than for nickel powders.

Into has a long history of leader- ship in nickel powders. In 1944, our Clydach refinery commissioned powder decomposers and began pro- ducing nickel powder in large quan- tities for the first time. In 1953, we introduced the first nickel powder for use in NiCad batteries which offered good performance at low temperatures and high discharge rates.

Around the same time, we intro- duced Into Type 123 powder. Type 123 powder set the standard for nickel use in powder metallurgy, and continues to do so. Today’s Type 123 powder has evolved into a very different product from those earlier times thanks to many advances in production technology. Over the years, we have changed the properties and specifications of Type 123 powder to meet increas- ingly stringent demands for improvements in the strength, den- sity and fatigue of PM steels, so that Type 123 has retained its strong position in the powder metallurgy parts industry. Type 123 has unique properties of chemical purity and a specific powder morphology that cannot be created with any other refining process.

Carbonyl technology also offers a much wider range of morphologies including filamentary and more spherical and extra fine powders for different industrial uses. We are offer- ing an extended range of filamentary and extra fine powders specially designed for the powder metallurgy industry.

Carbonyl technology helped launch a legacy of product innova- tion at Into that continues to this day, and that will continue into the

future. We will stay closely engaged with customers, working with them to adapt existing products and devel- op new ones to meet changing appli- cations and needs. And we will con- tinue to have a group of technical experts at our research facilities dedi- cated to product research, so that Into stays on the leading edge of nickel product development.

Which leads me to a third and perhaps our most important strength, which at the risk of sound- ing clich@d, lies in our people. The fact is, from Ludwig Mond down to the present, our company has been extremely fortunate in attracting some true visionaries who have left a lasting mark on mining and metallurgy. At the same we’ve attracted a lot of “ordi- nary” people who proved to be extraordinary when it comes to doing their job e whether they are involved in mining, in research, or in marketing. Their countless con- tributions are the reason why we have chosen “Celebrating Our Human Spirit” as the theme for our 100th anniversary.

So what about the next 100 years? I can promise you that Into will remain committed to our special products business as a key strength that differentiates us from our com- petitors in the nickel business. And it remains a part of our business that we want to grow.

Powder metallurgy is one area where we see great potential to grow with our customers. I’m excit- ed by the prospect of helping to fur- ther penetrate the automotive parts business by having powder metal- lurgy replace even more machined parts. And I’m excited by the potential we still have to use the carbonyl process to make many new nickel powders.

Over the past 100 years, Into has been fortunate enough to find the right combination of resources, tech- nology, and people to maintain strong economics of production and adapt continuously to our markets. I’m con- fident that as we embark on the biggest growth phase in our history, these three ingredients will continue to help us and our customers prosper. into another great century.

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