The nickeliferous iron ores of Cuba are owned entirely by American companies, principally by steel manufacturing companies, notably the Bethlehem Steel Co.
All three companies producing or about to produce nickel in the Sudbury district own their own smelting and refining plants. The International has been smelting its ore in Canada and refining it in the United States. It has a new refinery at Port Colborne, Ontario. The Mond Nickel Co. which smelts in Canada and refines in England, has started a refinery in Canada. The British-American Nickel Corporation has built both a smelter and a refinery in Canada.
The United States Nickel Co. operates a refinery at New Brunswick, New Jersey. Les Hauts-Fourneaux de Noumea and this company belong to the same interests. They have a smelter at Noumea, New Caledonia; also a refinery at Havre, France.
La Société le Nickel has a smelter at Thio, New Caledonia, and refineries at Havre, France, and Erdington and Kirkintilloch, British Isles.
No one refining process dominates the nickel industry of the world. The two companies producing nickel from Sudbury ores are using entirely different refining processes, which they individually control; and the British-America concern, soon to begin producing, will use a third process, the Hybinette, an electrolytic process on which it has exclusive rights for North America. The Orford Copper Co., subsidiary of the International, uses what is known as the “salt-cake” process, but it also produces some nickel electrolytically.
The process of the United States Nickel Co. at New Brunswick, New Jersey, being one of fluxing and reducing from matte produced at the Noumea smelter, is not adaptable to copper-bearing sulphide ores.
The ores produced in Norway are smelted and refined in Norway by the Hybinette process.
Obviously the nickel resources of the world are controlled by a few companies. The chief one is the International Nickel Co., which has the largest holdings at Sudbury, and the second largest holdings in New Caledonia. The Mond and the British-America are the next most important, and La Société le Nickel is fourth in importance. E. J. Longyear Co. and associates do not aspire to become producers of nickel and are in the market to sell their properties. For a new concern to succeed it would have to develop a refining process of its own. The alternative would be for it to sell out to or merge itself with a firm that controls a refining process. There are no custom smelters or refineries in America. The Mond company buys the Alexo ore because its high magnesium content makes it a good fluxing material in smelting Sudbury ores.