Nickel price surged this week (2.14-2.18)

1、 Trend analysis

According to the nickel price monitoring of the business society, the nickel price fell first and then rose this week. As of February 18, the spot nickel price was 179333.33 yuan / ton, up 0.9% from 177733.33 yuan / ton at the beginning of the week and 28.2% year-on-year.

Nickel weekly rise and fall chart

According to the weekly rise and fall chart of the business society, in the past 12 weeks, the nickel price has risen by 7, fell by 5 and leveled by 1. The recent trend of nickel price is still dominated by strong shock.

Nickel industry chain

In terms of supply and demand: enterprises in Guangxi, Tianjin and Shandong continued to stop production since 2021, and enterprises in Gansu, Jilin and Xinjiang normally produced during the Spring Festival. In January, the overall output of domestic refined nickel is expected to decrease by 13.86% month on month to 12500 tons, a year-on-year decrease of 3.93%. In February, the output of 300 series stainless steel crude steel was 1256600 tons, a month on month decrease of 1.1% and a year-on-year increase of 11.0%. In February, the estimated output of China’s ternary precursor was 64500 tons, an increase of 1.1% month on month and 51% year-on-year.

To sum up: the current shortage of nickel metal, combined with the strong development of terminal new energy vehicles, drives the stable growth of the demand for nickel for batteries. The inventory of the exchange remains low, the inventory of LME nickel continues to decline, and continues to maintain the new low in the past two years. The pattern of tight nickel supply remains, and the fundamental support is strong. The potential adverse factors for the release of thousands of tons of nickel in March are the high price of ice and the potential squeeze of downstream profits. On the whole, before a large amount of high matte nickel is released, the shortage of pure nickel is difficult to alleviate, and the nickel price is expected to remain high.