Price trend

According to the nickel price monitoring of SunSirs, nickel prices fell first and then rose this week. As of February 18, the spot nickel price was 179,333.33 RMB/ton, an increase of 0.9% from the price of 177,733.33 RMB/ton at the beginning of the week and a year-on-year increase of 28.2%.

According to data from SunSirs, in the past 12 weeks, nickel prices have risen in 7 weeks, fell in 3 weeks, and remained flat in 1 week. The recent trend of nickel prices is still dominated by shocks to be strong.

Analysis review

Supply and demand: Enterprises in Guangxi, Tianjin, and Shandong continued to stop production from 2021, and enterprises in Gansu, Jilin, and Xinjiang produced normally during the Spring Festival. The overall domestic refined nickel production in January was expected to decrease by 13.86% month-on-month to 12,500 tons, a year-on-year decrease of 3.93%. In February, the production of 300 series stainless steel crude steel was 1.2566 million tons, a decrease of 1.1% month-on-month and an increase of 11.0% year-on-year. In February, the estimated output of ternary precursors in China was 64,500 tons, an increase of 1.1% month-on-month and a year-on-year increase of 51%.

Market outlook

To sum up: Nickel metal is currently in short supply, the strong development of terminal new energy vehicles has driven a steady increase in the demand for nickel for batteries, the stock exchange has remained low, and the LME nickel stock has continued to decline, continuing to maintain a new low in the past two years, the pattern of tight nickel supply remains, and the fundamental support is strong. Potential negative factors are that high prices squeeze downstream profits and the release of 1,000 tons of high nickel matte in March. On the whole, it is difficult to alleviate the shortage of pure nickel until the high nickel matte is released in large quantities, and it is expected that the price of nickel will still run at a high level.

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