The battery in an electric car contains nickel. Much of that nickel, at some point in its supply chain, passes through refineries that trace their feedstock to mines like the one above Basamuk Bay. The Ramu Nickel Mine in Papua New Guinea's Madang Province is one of the largest sources of nickel and cobalt in the Asia-Pacific, and the ore it pulls from the ground - laterite, a weathered tropical soil the color of rust - helps power the electrification of transport in places that will never see this coast. The mine has been running since 2012. Madang's governor has called it the worst environmental disaster in Papua New Guinea history. Both statements are true.
Ramu sits on a laterite nickel-cobalt deposit, which is to say a bed of deeply weathered rock where millions of years of tropical rain have leached out lighter minerals and concentrated the heavier metals in place. The ore is found in the saprolite - the softer, partly decomposed rock layer above unweathered bedrock - and is mined using relatively shallow open-cut methods. The project reports reserves sufficient for at least another fifteen years of operation as of 2024, with exploration drilling suggesting the life could be extended further. The resource classification follows the JORC Code, the Australasian standard for reporting mineral resources publicly. None of the metal is processed in Papua New Guinea past the concentrate stage; it moves on to refineries elsewhere for the final conversion into battery-grade compounds.
The mine is operated by MCC Ramu NiCo Ltd., a subsidiary of the Metallurgical Corporation of China - a state-owned Chinese enterprise that is one of the most active foreign investors in Papua New Guinean mining. MCC holds 67.02% of the operation. A minority stake of 8.56% belongs to Nickel 28 Capital Corp., a Canadian company listed on the TSX Venture Exchange, with a contractual option to expand its holdings to 20.55% once construction debt is repaid and additional purchase rights are exercised at market value. The management company is Ramu NiCo Management (MCC) Limited, a wholly owned MCC subsidiary. The ownership chart is a reminder that mining in Papua New Guinea rarely reduces to a single country of origin - the capital is Chinese and Canadian, the markets are global, and the ore comes out of the ground of a Melanesian province.
The refinery is at Basamuk Bay on the north coast, connected to the mine by a slurry pipeline that carries ore down from the highlands. After processing, the tailings - the waste left after the valuable metals are extracted - are discharged into the sea through a practice known as deep-sea tailings placement. The intent is to dump the waste below the thermocline so it settles on the seafloor and disperses slowly. In August 2019, a slurry spill sent reddish, iron-stained waste visibly across the surface of Basamuk Bay, a pulse of pollution so dramatic that Reuters reported it worldwide. Subsequent investigation found that the mine's environmental management plan had relied on inadequate data, faulty methodology, and contradictory models. Madang Governor Peter Yama called it the worst environmental disaster in the country's history. In 2020, local communities and the provincial government filed suit against the operators, seeking restitution for damage to fisheries and coastal livelihoods.
Every mine is a negotiation between extraction and consequence. At Ramu, the consequences have fallen hardest on the coastal villages that fish the waters where the tailings are placed. The fishermen of Basamuk Bay never voted for a battery revolution. The highlanders living near the open cuts never asked for their soils to feed the Chinese smelters that feed the Korean and Japanese refineries that feed the electric vehicle plants of Europe and North America. This is the shape of global supply chains: the cost and the benefit rarely stand in the same place. Nickel demand is climbing because the world is trying to move off internal combustion, and every major projection shows laterite mines like Ramu carrying more of the load. The mine continues to operate. The court cases continue. The ore continues to flow.
The Ramu Nickel Mine is located near 5.73 degrees south, 145.77 degrees east, in Madang Province, Papua New Guinea. The mine itself sits inland in the Kurumbukari area; the refinery is on the coast at Basamuk Bay, linked by a slurry pipeline. Madang Airport (AYMD) is the nearest significant airport. Expect tropical weather with heavy afternoon convective activity and limited mountain terrain to the south in the Bismarck Range. Port Moresby (AYPY) is the major international hub.