Until recently this high demand for nickel has been supplied mostly from the sulfide based nickel reserves; however, this trend is changing towards the more abundant lateritic type nickel resources, which account for about 70% of the world nickel reserves. This is due to technical, economic and environmental reasons. To illustrate, apart from the predominance of lateritic deposits over sulfides, their easier mining by simple open-pit mining methods, unlike the extremely expensive underground mining of sulfides, makes their utilization more preferable. Finally, significant amounts of cobalt contained in laterites makes them more competitive in the nickel industry.