LONDON– Norilsk Nickel Mining & Metallurgical Co. (NILSY), the world’s largest nickel producer, is urging other nickel miners to consider cutting production in response to the low price environment, but said it won’t contribute to those cuts.
The Russian nickel producer, which also produces palladium, platinum and copper, estimates that about 70% of the world’s nickel production capacity is currently loss-making, but only 17% is at risk of shutting down even though the nickel price hit a 12-year low in February and is still down 37% over the past year.
“We do hope that…this year there will be serious discussions at management and boardroom [levels] as to how they should react to the market, because for us there should be some response from the industry” to the price drop, said Sergey Dubovitskiy, Norilsk’s head of strategy. But “given our lowest cost position on the cost curve, this shouldn’t be us,” he told The Wall Street Journal in an interview on Tuesday.