At Vale Day New York 2017 held on December 6, Jennifer Maki, Vale's executive officer, base metals, said that Vale is taking steps to transition to a smaller footprint in nickel by calibrating investments and production to reflect current market conditions. In 2017, successful transition to a single furnace in Sudbury was completed with no impact on production, the capacity of the Long Harbour plant was ramped up to 27,000 mt from 15,000, production at Thompson was shifted to one furnace in January 2017 and the nickel refinery in Taiwan was placed on care and maintenance in November of the same year. Maki added that the ramp-up of Long Harbour will continue in 2018 and that plant capacity will reach 39,000 mt.
Maki stated that electric vehicles will bring an upside to the market in the long term as they increase nickel demand for the battery market. According to the Vale official, in 2025 electric passenger vehicles will make up 13 to 20 percent of total passenger vehicles and in 2035 they will account for a share of between 27 percent and 52 percent of the total. Maki explained that the amount of nickel needed to supply that level of electric vehicles will be about 800,000 mt by 2030 on a conservative basis, and in the optimistic case, will be 2 million mt, which is the size of the nickel market today.