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Indonesian miners brace for prolonged low nickel prices
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A worker checks on Oct. 18, 2019 nickel pig iron (NPI) that was produced in the Morowali industrial park in Bahodopi district, Morowali regency, Central Sulawesi.
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ndonesia’s nickel miners are bracing for a price slump in 2024, as the global glut is expected to continue growing while demand growth has declined.
A slew of announcements by companies worldwide about cutting production and closing mines has yet to prop up the metal’s prices, and analysts do not expect the reduced supply to lift them soon.
Bayu Aji, head of communications at Vale Indonesia, said the company would maintain its production target at 70,800 tonnes, even as nickel prices continued to edge lower.
“PT Vale will work to [improve] matters that are within our control, such as streamlining the company’s operational costs,” he said on Thursday, in response to a question from The Jakarta Post about the mining firm’s strategy to overcome the prolonged price slump for the key battery ingredient.
“Nickel was the worst performer among the base metals complex on LME [London Metal Exchange] and SHFE [Shanghai Futures Exchange] in 2023, losing more than 40 percent of its value on both exchanges,” cross-commodity price reporting agency Fastmarkets said in a 2024 preview of China’s nickel market on Jan. 15.
“With bearish sentiment continuing to dominate the Class-1 nickel market, market participants, however, expect the downward move in 2024 to look more modest than that in 2023,” the report continued.
Read also: With LFP batteries all the rage, experts differ on future of nickel in EV industry
