Metallurgy is a domain of materials science and engineering that studies the physical and chemical behavior of metallic elements, their inter-metallic compounds, and their mixtures, which are known as alloys.
Vale Canada Limited is a wholly owned subsidiary of the Brazilian mining company Vale. Vale's nickel mining and metals division is headquartered in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. It produces nickel, copper, cobalt, platinum, rhodium, ruthenium, iridium, gold, and silver. Prior to being purchased by CVRD in 2006, Inco was the world's second largest producer of nickel, and the third largest mining company outside South Africa and Russia of platinum group metals. It was also a charter member of the 30-stock Dow Jones Industrial Average formed on October 1, 1928.
ATI Inc. is an American producer of specialty materials headquartered in Dallas, Texas. ATI produces metals including titanium and titanium alloys, nickel-based alloys and superalloys, stainless and specialty steels, zirconium, hafnium, and niobium, tungsten materials, forgings and castings.
Inconel is a nickel-chromium-based superalloy often utilized in extreme environments where components are subjected to high temperature, pressure or mechanical loads. Inconel alloys are oxidation- and corrosion-resistant. When heated, Inconel forms a thick, stable, passivating oxide layer protecting the surface from further attack. Inconel retains strength over a wide temperature range, attractive for high-temperature applications where aluminum and steel would succumb to creep as a result of thermally-induced crystal vacancies. Inconel's high-temperature strength is developed by solid solution strengthening or precipitation hardening, depending on the alloy.
Moanda is one of the largest towns in Gabon, lying on the N3 road in Haut Ogooué. It is also one of the most important manganese mining towns in the world, under the auspices of the Compagnie Minière de l'Ogooué (COMILOG), which began mining in 1957. Moanda has a population of around 39,298 inhabitants and is the second largest city in the Haut Ogooué Region, after Franceville. It is also a border town, lying 100 km away from the border with the Republic of Congo.
Vale, formerly Companhia Vale do Rio Doce, is a Brazilian multinational corporation engaged in metals and mining and one of the largest logistics operators in Brazil. Vale is the largest producer of iron ore and nickel in the world. It also produces manganese, ferroalloys, copper, bauxite, potash, kaolin, and cobalt, currently operating nine hydroelectricity plants, and a large network of railroads, ships, and ports used to transport its products.
Orano Cycle, formerly COGEMA and Areva NC, is a French nuclear fuel company. It is the main subsidiary of Orano S.A. It is an industrial group active in all stages of the uranium fuel cycle, including uranium mining, conversion, enrichment, spent fuel reprocessing, and recycling.
Austenitic stainless steel is one of the five classes of stainless steel by crystalline structure. Its primary crystalline structure is austenite and it prevents steels from being hardenable by heat treatment and makes them essentially non-magnetic. This structure is achieved by adding enough austenite-stabilizing elements such as nickel, manganese and nitrogen. The Incoloy family of alloys belong to the category of super austenitic stainless steels.
The COMILOG Cableway was one of the longest cableways in the world, until its closure in 1986. The ropeway conveyor ran for 76 km from Moanda in the Haut-Ogooué Province of south eastern Gabon to Mbinda in the Republic of Congo.
Tinfos is a private Norwegian holding company. Its roots dates back to 1875, and has today the head office in Oslo, Norway. The firm is one of the oldest companies in its field of activity in Europe. Its main products are silicomanganese, High Purity Pig Iron and titanium dioxide. The company is structured in 4 different divisions. Tinfos AS was sold 15 April 2008 to the French-based manganese company Eramet. In 2009, Eramet sold the international unit of Tinfos to Holta Invest AS, a Norwegian investment company.
Cobalt is a chemical element; it has symbol Co and atomic number 27. As with nickel, cobalt is found in the Earth's crust only in a chemically combined form, save for small deposits found in alloys of natural meteoric iron. The free element, produced by reductive smelting, is a hard, lustrous, somewhat brittle, gray metal.
Nickel mining in New Caledonia is a major sector of the New Caledonian economy. The island contains about 7.1 million tonnes of nickel reserves, about 10% of the world's total. With an annual production of 200,000 tonnes in 2020, New Caledonia was the world's fourth largest producer after Indonesia (760,000), Philippines (320,000), and Russia (280,000), followed by Australia (170,000) and Canada (150,000).
Tiebaghi is a mine and former village near Koumac, New Caledonia.
The Koniambo mine is a large mine in the north of New Caledonia in the North Province. It is closest to the small town of Voh, on the west coast of the island. Nickel is found on the Koniambo Massif, and taken by conveyor to a new smelter on the coast. Koniambo has one of the largest nickel reserves in New Caledonia, with around 151 million tonnes of ore grading at 2.58% nickel. Each 62.5 million tonnes of ore contains 4 million tonnes of nickel metal.
South32 is a mining and metals company headquartered in Perth, Western Australia. It was spun out of BHP Billiton on 18 May 2015. It is listed on the Australian Securities Exchange with secondary listings on the Johannesburg and London Stock Exchanges.
The Compagnie minière de l'Ogooué, or COMILOG, is a manganese mining and processing company based in Moanda, Gabon. It is a subsidiary of the French metallurgical group Eramet. The company is the world's second largest producer of manganese ore. At first the ore was carried by a cableway to the border with the Republic of the Congo, then by rail to the sea at Pointe-Noire. In the 1980s a railway was built to carry the ore through Gabon to the sea near Libreville.
The 2020 protests in New Caledonia began on 28 October 2020 over a plan to sell a Vale-owned nickel and cobalt mine to a consortium led by Trafigura. The nickel mine and plant is known as the Goro mine. Independence leaders and pro-independence protesters wanted for the nickel plant to be owned by citizens of New Caledonia rather than foreign investors, though various arrangements have been proposed.
The Weda Bay Industrial Park is a nickel mining and industrial park complex in Central Halmahera Regency, North Maluku, Indonesia. The Weda Bay Mine is now among the largest nickel mines in the world.
Christel Bories is a French business leader.
