(Bloomberg) — A little-known Australian company is becoming the Western face of a Chinese nickel behemoth. In under a decade, Nickel Industries Ltd. has gone from a relatively small miner to the world’s sixth-biggest producer of a metal used in products from batteries to stainless steel.
Riding a Chinese-led boom in Indonesia’s nickel sector, it owns or has stakes in five plants in the country that churn out more of the commodity than household names like BHP Group Ltd.
Behind the company’s success is Tsingshan Holding Group Co., the world’s largest nickel and stainless steelmaker and Nickel Industries’s biggest shareholder. The closely-held conglomerate owned by billionaire Xiang Guangda has built smelters for the Australian company at a speed and cost that’s given it an advantage over competitors, but which could also pose risks for the firm going forward.
In return, Nickel Industries has given Tsingshan — which is heavily dependent on the Chinese market — access to Western investors, a means to recycle the capital it has poured into Indonesia and a potential back door to the US electric vehicle market.
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