Melua, you are correct that Jinchuan have an offtake agreement for the concentrate but you can bet your bottom dollar that they would be happy to take nickel metal. Less shipping costs per tonne of contained metal and smelter/refinery capacities are tipped to be at full capacity, meaning Jinchuan can then use their refinery capacity for concentrate from other sources - of which there are many.
The bottleneck in coming years will be the smelter/refinery. No new smelters are likely to be built due to the suphidic emissions and hence there is a push towards hydrometallurgy which skips the smelting and does not emit sulphide pollution. In addition when buying from a distant location all things being equal you would want to buy the highest purity product you can, due to the fixed per tonne logistics costs.
AGM Price at posting:
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