Nickel Demand Surges as China Rebuilds Inventory Levels
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2024-07-03に共有
Nickel climbed back up to the $17,500 range. LME inventories are up about 5,000 tonnes (another China/Indonesia refinery had product certified last month) to 93 kt, while SHFE inventories dropped up 2,000 tonnes to 22.5 kt. LME inventories are at 2 years high - this was expected by me – we’re now up about 80kt across both exchanges since the market bottom – while that may sound ominous, please remember some analysts have 200+kt surpluses over the last 2 years. I believe that we had ~100kt last year and are running a small surplus heading to balance this year, so it would make sense that this amount of inventory would work its way onto inventories.
More uncertainty over near-term expectations for EV sales combined with a renewed drop in lithium prices has slowed expected restocking. I still expect to see the overall nickel demand climb by 10% once we get through this uncertainty. INSG reported nickel demand YTD April up over 8% and a balanced market in April (~12kt surplus annualized)
With EV/lithium seeing sulphate prices in China come off and back to a discount (where we expect), stainless prices are holding steady, and inventories in China have come off.
Changes in another commodity will support stainless prices. We saw major incidents at 2 met coal mines in Australia and the US, which are pushing met coal prices higher. Metallurgical coal/coke is a significant cost component for NPI/stainless production in China and Indonesia.
Per last session, after halt, Western Mines Group announced $1.5 million investment from Dundee Corp – Canadian merchant investor and have subsequently announced another good drill hole from Mulga Tank – first 600 metres continuously mineralized at 0.29% nickel with intervals of 0.3-0.4% nickel and had one 1 metre sample of 1.5% nickel.
Canada Nickel announced a $US15 million bridge facility from Auramet, our long-standing financing partner. We’ve done 3 of these before, having bridged to financing/partners, including Anglo-American and Samsung/Agnico, in the past. We are targeting a bridge to completing the JV/equity financing required for Crawford.
Magna Mining announced results from infill drilling in surface bulk sample area for low Cu-Ni, high PGM, which delivered results showing 5-20 g/t intervals.
Premium Nickel continues to deliver drill results – 10 more holes to be utilized in their upcoming resource (which will come through in “coming weeks”) – saw core lengths and grades consistent with prior holes.
SPC Nickel announced drilling at the Muskox intrusion in Nunavut, Northern Canada. It is a remote location but a large intrusion that produced some splashy intersections in historical work done in the 1960s/1970s. We should see some interesting news flow through the fall.
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コメント (4)
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I don’t think you’ll find a more competent CEO of a junior mining company than Mark. investing in Canada Nickel at the current prices is possibly the simplest decision I’ve made in my investing career. Thanks again Matt for the interview. Appreciate your work.
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Muskox is a huge intrusive complex property package that has minimal exploration done due to its northern location.
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This fella Mark only talks out when Nickel prices are rising, never when they are falling. Is that only me who is noticing that?
