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Indonesia, the world’s largest nickel exporter, has a sobering message for struggling producers of the battery metal elsewhere: don’t expect any meaningful revival in prices.
Nickel prices plunged by around 45% last year, and dipped briefly below $16,000 a ton earlier this month, as demand faltered and supply from Indonesia surged to more than 50% of the global total. Nearly half of all nickel operations worldwide are unprofitable at recent levels, forcing miners in Australia and New Caledonia to consider shutting down for good.
“We know what happened with cobalt three, four years ago,” Seto said, referring to a surge in the price of the metal that drove buyers to look at other options.“You have to make sure everyone in the ecosystem has a good profitability, not an excessive one.”