BEIJING – Lygend Resources & Technology Co Ltd, a Chinese nickel producer and dealer, has filed an initial public offering (IPO) on the Hong Kong Exchange.
The application does not specify how much money Lygend intends to raise through the Hong Kong IPO. Last year, its profit from January to September was 415 million yuan ($65.5 million).
The late-Tuesday submission came after the Ningbo-based company requested it from China’s securities regulator in late January.
Lygend Resources, which claims to be China’s largest nickel ore dealer with a market share of roughly 27% in 2020, trades laterite nickel ore obtained from miners in the Philippines and Turkey, as well as nickel pig iron (NPI) from Indonesia.
It also manufactures nickel products both at home and abroad, with 180,000 tonnes of NPI produced domestically each year and two projects with Indonesian partners.
The company had made significant investments to develop its operations and investigate novel materials in the nickel sector, which is gaining pace amid a global new energy boom.
Its $1.05 billion project with Harita Group is Indonesia’s first high-pressure acid leach (HPAL) project to reach production.
Lygend also co-operates on a rotary klin electric furnace (RKEF) project on Obi Island, Indonesia, with plans to begin production between 2022 and 2024.
According to the report, Lygend traded about 9.2 million tonnes of nickel products in the first three quarters of 2021 and produced 11,734 tonnes of NPI during that time.
In the next five to ten years, the company hopes to have an annual capacity of 500,000 tonnes of nickel and 23,000 tonnes of cobalt.
Source: Reuters/edited
