During Tesla's recent quarterly conference call, Tesla CEO Elon Musk called on miners to start building nickel mines in anticipation of shortages of this critical material for electric vehicle batteries.
"Well, I'd just like to re-emphasize, any mining companies out there, please mine more nickel. Okay. Wherever you are in the world, please mine more nickel and don't wait for nickel to go back to some long — some high point that you experienced some five years ago, whatever. Go for efficiency, obviously environmentally friendly nickel mining at high volume. Tesla will give you a giant contract for a long period of time, if you mine nickel efficiently and in an environmentally sensitive way. So hopefully this message goes out to all mining companies. Please get nickel," Musk said.
"If you want environmentally responsible nickel, I really think you have to look at sulphide deposits in first-world jurisdictions such as Canada and Australia," said Mark Jarvis, CEO of Giga Metals Corp. (TSX.V-GIGA). "Canada has several very large, low-grade, open pittable sulphide nickel deposits waiting to be developed, including Canada Nickel's Crawford deposit, Waterton's Dumont deposit and our own Turnagain deposit. Canada has some of the toughest environmental regulations in the world, so if you buy your nickel from Canada, you can be assured that this part of your supply chain is ethically sourced."
Giga Metals holds 100% ownership of the Turnagain project, in north-central British Columbia (BC), Canada. Turnagain is reportedly among the largest undeveloped sulphide nickel projects in the world, with metallurgical test work showing significant deposits of high-quality nickel that can be used in lithium ion batteries, with the site also holding cobalt, another critical element in battery production.