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Nickel Laterites

Philippines Looks To Replicate Indonesia’s Nickel Market Success – by Ag Metal Miner (Oil Price.com – February 20, 2023)

https://oilprice.com/

The Stainless Monthly Metals Index (MMI) rose 5.82% from January to February as the nickel price index lost upward momentum. Nickel prices returned sideways in the short term after finding a peak in January. Since the price has not bounced high enough to confirm an uptrend, downside risk may increase.

Meanwhile, volume levels appear at least partially responsible for current stainless and nickel price action. Overall buyer volume has continued to decline since January. This comes after a much more substantial loss of liquidity in 2022. Now, the rally has not only lost momentum, but there is enough volatility in the market for nickel prices to have no clear market direction at all.

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Clean nickel or cheap nickel? You can’t have both – by Anthony Milewski (Northern Miner – February 2023)

https://www.northernminer.com/

Nickel price trends have become hard to predict. Ever since the London Metals Exchange (LME) crash, in March 2022, and the subsequent canceled trades, a number of banks pulled out and took with them the Exchange’s liquidity. Nickel prices on the LME have since become so volatile that suppliers no longer view them as representative of nickel’s market value.

Today, most of the nickel being sold – particularly by the Chinese – is direct to producers and at prices based on nickel sulphate and therefore disconnected from the disgraced LME. It’s possible that the LME may eventually recover.

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Workers Are Dying in the EV Industry’s ‘Tainted’ City – by Peter Yeung (Wired Magazine – February 28, 2023)

https://www.wired.com/

In Indonesia, sickness and pollution plague a sprawling factory complex that supplies the world with crucial battery materials.

AFTER DAYBREAK, THE village of Labota begins to shudder with the roar of motorbikes. Thousands of riders in canary yellow helmets and dust-stained workwear pack its ramshackle, pothole-ridden main road, in places six or seven lanes wide, as it runs along the coast of Indonesia’s Banda Sea. The mass of traffic crawls toward the Indonesia Morowali Industrial Park, better known as IMIP, the world’s epicenter for nickel production.

“This is a tainted city,” says Sarida, a woman in her forties buying cough medicine at a roadside pharmacy. Only her eyes are visible; the rest wrapped in a face mask, hijab, and burqa. Behind her, a factory belches out brown plumes as thick as a skyscraper.

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Exploitation Of Illegal Nickel Mines In Indonesia – OpEd – by Silvanah (Eurasia Review – February 19, 2023)

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Indonesia has abundant natural resources, especially nickel. Nickel is the raw material for making electric vehicle batteries. Electric vehicles are predicted to be low in emissions or environmentally friendly.

Developed countries are currently competing to produce electric vehicles. Indonesia is not left behind with big plans to form a company producing electric vehicle batteries. This has attracted the interest of foreign mining companies including China to enter and explore for nickel in Indonesia.

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Indonesia’s uncertain climb up the nickel value chain – by Kyunghoon Kim (The Interperter/Lowy Institute – February 20, 2023)

https://www.lowyinstitute.org/

Demand for is driving domestic and foreign direct investment in the country’s minerals sector. But caution is needed.

Indonesia has historically had limited success with industrial policy. That may now be changing, with recent interventionist policies targeting the nickel sector suggesting initial success in developing downstream segments of the value chain. So successful have these industrial policies been that the government is planning to target other minerals in a similar fashion, despite the objections of major trading partners.

After a period of liberalisation following the Asian financial crisis, Indonesia saw strong economic nationalism emerge again in the late 2000s. Nationalistic policies have been particularly strong in the natural resource sector.

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Column: The devil’s metal strikes again in Trafigura nickel fraud case – by Andy Home (Reuters – February 19, 2023)

https://www.reuters.com/

LONDON, Feb 17 (Reuters) – Another year, another nickel scandal as the devil’s metal lives up to its reputation. When German miners first came across the stuff in fifteenth century Saxony, they dubbed it “Kupfernickel”, or “Devil’s Copper” because it looked like copper but wasn’t.

Appearances can be deceptive when it comes to nickel, as Trafigura has just found out half a millennium later. The commodity trader will take a $577 million charge in the first half of 2023 against potential losses arising from what it called a “systematic fraud” involving cargoes of nickel that were not nickel.

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How Citigroup helped lift the lid on Trafigura’s nickel nightmare – by Jack Farchy and Jonathan Browning (Bloomberg News – February 14, 2023)

https://www.bnnbloomberg.ca/

As Trafigura Group’s metal traders were partying in London at last year’s LME Week jamboree, Citigroup Inc. was taking a step that would end up shaking their world.

Until late October, the US bank had been helping to finance Trafigura’s nickel trades with companies linked to Indian businessman Prateek Gupta — deals which Trafigura now says were part of a “systematic fraud” against it that could cost more than half a billion dollars.

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Like Musk, nickel-rich Indonesia has high electric vehicle ambitions – by Fransiska Nangoy, Gayatri Suroyo and Bernadette Christina (Reuters – February 6, 2023)

https://www.reuters.com/

JAKARTA, Feb 6 (Reuters) – Armed with the world’s largest reserves of nickel and a ban on the export of nickel ore, Indonesia is making itself indispensable for the electric vehicle industry, which uses the metal extensively.

In just three years, Indonesia has signed more than a dozen deals worth more than $15 billion for battery and electric vehicle production in the country with manufacturers including Hyundai Motor (005380.KS), LG Group (003550.KS) and Foxconn (2317.T).

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Nickel Gets Fresh Supply Risk as Philippines Mulls Export Tax – by Manolo Serapio Jr and Andreo Calonzo (Bloomberg News – January 30, 2023)

https://www.bloomberg.com/

The Philippines, the world’s second-biggest nickel supplier, may follow neighboring Indonesia by taxing exports of the metal, adding to supply uncertainties as the market adjusts to a wave of new demand from electric vehicles.

The Southeast Asian nation is considering fees on exports among measures to encourage investment in processing plants, Environment and Natural Resources Secretary Antonia Yulo Loyzaga said in an interview in her office on Monday.

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Indonesia pushing for OPEC-style nickel cartel – by James Guild (Asia Times – January 26, 2023)

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Indonesia wants much more for its ore as demand for nickel used in lithium-ion batteries set to explode in new electric vehicle era

Indonesian Minister of Investment Bahlil Lahadalia suggested that Indonesia is looking into forming an OPEC-style cartel for nickel and other inputs used in battery production.

Nickel is becoming a hot commodity as it is a key input in the manufacture of lithium-ion batteries needed for electric vehicles (EVs) — and Indonesia has the world’s largest nickel ore deposits.

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Violence at Chinese-owned nickel smelter in Indonesia raises alarm – by Amy Chew and Ismi Damayanti (Nikkei Asia – January 24, 2023)

https://asia.nikkei.com/

KUALA LUMPUR/JAKARTA — Recent clashes at a Chinese-owned nickel smelting facility in Indonesia are likely to spread to other parts of the country if the government and Chinese owners fail to address issues of safety, analysts say.

Protests, some violent, have occurred sporadically in recent years on the mineral-rich island of Sulawesi, which is experiencing an investment boom for mining nickel, a key ingredient in electric vehicle batteries. Indonesia is keen to leverage its world-leading reserves of the metal and develop a domestic EV industry.

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Chinese and Indonesian Workers Clash at Indonesian Nickel Plant – by Muhammad Zulfikar Rakhmat (The Diplomat – January 17, 2023)

https://thediplomat.com/

The violence, which resulted in the deaths of two workers, is likely to inflame anti-Chinese sentiment in the country.

Two workers were killed in clashes and rioting at an Indonesian nickel processing plant over the weekend, officials said yesterday. The demonstrations at the PT Gunbuster Nickel Industry (GNI) in Morowali, Central Sulawesi, ended in clashes between groups of Indonesian workers and foreign workers from China, leading to the deaths of two people, a Chinese and an Indonesian.

On Saturday, workers belonging to the National Workers’ Union (SPN) held a meeting with the company. During the meeting, the mass of SPN workers presented eight demands to the company, but no agreement was reached between the two parties at the meeting.

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Two workers die in clashes at Indonesia nickel smelter (Nikkei Asia – January 16, 2023)

https://asia.nikkei.com/

Violence erupts as workers demonstrate for better pay and safety

JAKARTA (Reuters) — Two workers were killed in clashes and rioting at an Indonesian nickel smelting facility at the weekend, officials said on Monday, after violence erupted during a protest by a labor group demanding better pay and safety.

An Indonesian and a Chinese worker were killed during the unrest at the PT Gunbuster Nickel Industry (GNI) smelter, owned by China’s Jiangsu Delong Nickel Industry, which involved protesters, workers and security personnel, said Didik Supranoto, a spokesperson for Central Sulawesi police.

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France giving emergency payment to SLN to try to save the mining firm (RNZ.co.nz – Janauary 16, 2023)

https://www.rnz.co.nz/

An urgent funding boost of $US63 million will be provided to New Caledonia’s SLN to try to save the company. The so-called Urgent Progressional Plan is a short-term measure which could give enough time to formulate a long-term plan to save the company from bankruptcy with the resulting loss of thousands of jobs.

A financial inspection from the Ministry of Finance will be sent to check if the urgent funds are being used to save the company. The Noumea-based mining company has been experiencing serious financial difficulties due to fluctuating global prices of nickel and a lack of investment in company infrastructure.

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Nickel market faces new shock as ‘Big Shot’ boosts metal output – by Alfred Cang, Jack Farchy and Mark Burton (Bloomberg News – January 2023)

https://www.bnnbloomberg.ca/

The billionaire at the center of last year’s nickel short squeeze is planning a major shift in his production mix, in a move that could reshape global supply dynamics and inject fresh volatility into the battered nickel market.

Xiang Guangda’s Tsingshan Holding Group Co. is seeking to profit from an unusually large premium in the price of refined nickel metal – the type that is deliverable on exchanges in London and Shanghai – over the intermediate forms that Tsingshan supplies for battery manufacturing, according to people familiar with the matter.

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