By Anne Hyland
Billionaire Clive Palmer’s companies have received approval from the state government-owned Port of Townsville to begin importing and exporting nickel product from a refinery mothballed since 2016.
Palmer has recently claimed to have sold the Queensland Nickel refinery - which was put into voluntary administration in 2016 with 800 workers laid off and endured six years of legal action between Palmer’s companies and the court appointed liquidator FTI Consulting - to an obscure Swiss-based syndicate.
Clive Palmer bought the Queensland Nickel refinery in 2009 from BHP. It went into administration in 2016, and then it took a further six years before various legal cases between the liquidator and Palmer’s companies were resolved. Credit: AAP
The $1.5 billion deal was announced last month, and at the time the syndicate, which involves several Australians, had still to secure the financing.
Nickel, one of the components used to make the batteries for electric vehicles, is trading at near a decade high, and is considered a critical element for the high-tech and green energy transition. Batteries are the costliest part of an electric vehicle.
“The Port of Townsville has in place an agreement with the current owners of Queensland Nickel to restart nickel ore imports, the terms of those arrangements are commercial in confidence,” a port spokesperson said. “The Port looks forward to continuing to work with Queensland Nickel as they progress their plans and approvals processes.”
Since 2018, Palmer has pushed to regain port access but the stumbling block had been outstanding legal action, payments to creditors, and a detailed plan for the revival of the refinery, which are said to have now been resolved.
By some estimates, the six years of legal action between Palmer’s companies and the liquidator involved almost 100 separate pieces of litigation.
A further hurdle to clear for port access, was that Palmer needed to negotiate with the berth leaseholder Glencore. Glencore declined to comment for this article.
In 2018, Palmer was quoted as saying: “Port access … that’s the biggest stumbling block. As soon as the port confirms to us, even by letter, that we can import ore and export product in Townsville then we will immediately employ 100 people that day.”
In March last year, Palmer was promising to re-open to the refinery but again cited port access as the problem. At the time he promised: “We can create a thousand direct jobs in Townsville for the community and everyone can benefit.”
The nickel refinery outside Townsville.Credit: Fairfax Media
The Swiss-based group Zero Carbon Investek, which intends to buy the refinery, has two directors Australian David Rigoll, who resides in Switzerland and who has been involved with small to medium size mining deals for the past four decades, and is president of the group; and Swiss lawyer Hans Josef Frey.
Zero Carbon Investek has circulated a document to potential investors, as it aims to raise capital to invest in the refinery. In the document, Indian Ocean Capital and Green Bond Corporation are cited as advisers on the project. Indian Ocean Capital is run by Domenic Martino, a former Deloitte Australia chief executive, who has been a long-time adviser to Palmer’s companies.
Zero Carbon says it also intends to invest a further $US800 million ($1.1 billion) in a renewable energy project to power the refinery. The investment plans are backed by estimates that the value of the nickel and cobalt in the refinery’s tailings dam is $US9.4 billion.
Zero Carbon Investek’s estimation of the value of the metals in the tailings dam is not corroborated in the liquidator’s report. The report, which relied on many experts, raised safety and environmental concerns about the tailings dam, but did not find any such value of the metals that reside in it. Market demand for nickel and cobalt have improved substantially since the report was written.
Another Australian involved with raising the financing for Zero Carbon Investek is Richard Petty, an accountant and former CPA Australia president and director, who resides in Hong Kong. He is not a director of the company. Petty, who has been a director of a number of small companies, has an online bio that claims he has “advised on projects with an aggregate economic impact in the hundreds of billions of dollars”.
Zero Carbon Investek was founded in 2021, as was Green Bond Corporation. Green Bond Corporation, which also counts Australians among its executives, is a Luxembourg-based, advisory group that says it “advises clients in the structuring and financing of large-scale, capital-intensive infrastructure projects”.
A Queensland Government spokesman said the Treasury department always did due diligence on such proposed deals. Zero Investek will also be subject to due diligence by the Foreign Investment Review Board before it makes a recommendation on the deal to federal Treasurer Jim Chalmers.
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