On March 3, a blockbuster news was released on the market, Qingshan Industrial, Huayou Cobalt and Zhongwei Co., Ltd. signed a high matte nickel supply agreement. The three parties jointly agreed that Qingshan Industrial will supply 60,000 tons of high matte nickel to Huayou Cobalt and 40,000 tons of high matte nickel to Zhongwei within one year starting from October 2021. As soon as the news came out, Shanghai nickel's main contract fell 5.87% in night trading, and stainless steel and Shanghai nickel closed the limit, the decline was 6.01%, 6%, and spot nickel and stainless steel also fell to varying degrees.
Spot nickel and spot stainless steel both fell
According to SunSirs price monitoring, spot nickel was quoted at RMB 132,266.67/ton on the 4th, down 5.28% from RMB 139,633.33/ton on the previous trading day, up 3.23% from the beginning of the year, and up 28.64% year-on-year.
According to SunSirs price monitoring, on the 4th, stainless steel fell slightly. The average daily price of spot 304/2B stainless steel flat 1.0*1219*2438 (tolerance 0.91) was 14233.33 yuan/ton, compared with 14,600 yuan/ton on the previous trading day. It was down 2.51%, up 7.15% from the beginning of the year and up 12% year-on-year.
Previously, the market generally expected that the nickel wet process project will be pushed to the end of this year, and the fire process project will take longer to land. The landing of the high matte nickel supply agreement signed by Qingshan Industrial, Huayou Cobalt and Zhongwei Co., Ltd. indicates the success of the Indonesian nickel iron-high matte process. Significantly exceeded market expectations. Originally, new energy vehicles-nickel batteries-nickel sulfate is a new demand point for nickel, and everyone is very optimistic. Now it turns out that high matte nickel is made from nickel iron, and the cost of nickel iron-high matte nickel-nickel sulfate is roughly At 15,000 yuan/ton nickel, the average quotation of high-nickel iron is only 1180 yuan/nickel, while the average price of electro-nickel is about 132,200 yuan/ton. The economics of producing nickel sulfate with high matte nickel is better than that of producing nickel sulfate from nickel beans. It is a competitive relationship with nickel, so the successful production test of high matte nickel has severely hit the nickel market, and nickel has fallen sharply. As for stainless steel, nickel, which is an upstream raw material, fell sharply, driving stainless steel to follow the decline.
The impact of this incident is inevitable, but for now, the fundamentals of nickel and stainless steel have not changed for the time being. First of all, they signed the contract to say that they will start supplying high matte nickel in October, and it is only in March at present, and there are still uncertainties in whether energy production will start in October and stable supply. Secondly, 100,000 tons of nickel matte is only a part of the supply, and there is still a long way to go to the oversupply, which will not be reflected until at least 2022. Finally, new energy vehicles only account for a relatively small part of the downstream demand for nickel, and the biggest demand is still for stainless steel. If you want to say, the impact is particularly large, it is not obvious.
As for stainless steel, although stainless steel futures fell sharply, the stainless steel spot fell slightly. In terms of fundamentals, the demand is still relatively strong. The downstream has a low purchase willingness before the holiday due to relatively high prices, transportation and other factors, and less stocks. After the resumption of work at this stage, the demand is gradually released, and the terminal purchase willingness has increased. The factory's low-priced inventory has basically been consumed. However, the social inventory of stainless steel is now large, and everyone is under pressure to ship.
To sum up, due to the impact of the Black Swan incident, nickel and stainless steel have fallen unanimously. However, in fact, the actual impact of this incident is still half a year old, and there will be more uncertain factors in the future. In the first quarter, the Philippines was still in the rainy season, and nickel supply was still tight. The demand for downstream stainless steel has not been greatly affected. However, the Heitian'e incident will still put a certain pressure on nickel and stainless steel. Nickel and stainless steel rose to historical highs in the early stage. This opportunity will also cool down the temperature. However, under the support of the traditional peak season, it will not fall. The price of nickel is expected to fall back to the price range of RMB 120,000 to RMB 130,000/ton, and the price of stainless steel is expected to be around RMB 13,000/ton.
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