Foreign media reported that on Tuesday, nickel prices held a nine-month high, because the industry's focus shifted to nickel supply to meet the needs of the booming electric vehicle market, while nickel ore production fell by double digits.
The Lisbon-based International Nickel Research Organization reported that the global nickel mining volume in June fell by 7.7% from the same period last year. Compared with the sharp decline in April and May, this is still an improvement.
So far this year, production has fallen by more than 10% to 1.1 million tons due to disruptions in major producing countries related to Covid-19, including the Philippines (down 28% year-on-year), Canada (down 19% year-on-year) and Indonesia (year-on-year decline) Down 11%).
Benchmark Mineral Intelligence, a price survey agency for the global battery supply chain, launched the first nickel price of its kind on Tuesday because the demand for the electric vehicle industry has reshaped the nickel industry, which is currently dominated by stainless steel.
"Mixed hydroxide precipitation (MHP) nickel is rapidly becoming the focus of raw material input in the nickel chemical industry. As the supply of new projects enters the market, nickel will be further absorbed."
MHP is an intermediate product of nickel metallurgy extracted from laterite ore. According to Benchmark, laterite ore contains both nickel (nickel content is usually 34-55%) and a small amount of cobalt (cobalt content is usually 1-4.5%).
Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla, a pioneer in electric vehicles, promised in July this year that he would sign a "long-term huge contract" with an environmentally responsible nickel mining company. In the long term, nickel used in electric vehicles is expected to account for 30% of the market, but now it only accounts for a small portion.
The existing suppliers do not have a clean record. Norilsk Nickel was fined billions of dollars for a diesel oil spill in the Arctic region of Russia. The Ramu plant of China Metallurgical Corp leaked mining waste to Basamuk Bay in Papua New Guinea a year ago. It is currently facing similar pressure from locals and environmental organizations.
New projects supplying the electric vehicle supply chain are mainly in Indonesia, which use high pressure acid leaching (HPAL) to extract nickel and cobalt from these low-grade ores.
Like Ramy, many of these companies use deep-sea tailings as a waste disposal method.
Simon Moores, founder and managing director of Benchmark Minerals, based in London, told Bloomberg: "For new nickel supplies, Elon and the battery industry will set their sights on HPAL in Indonesia."
"However, deep water treatment methods are increasingly putting these mines on the same blacklist as illegal artisanal cobalt in the Democratic Republic of the Congo."
