2019 Nickel outlook, page-2

Seems Jim Lennon is fairly close with his call of 50kt to 150kt deficit this year. Given off exchange stockpile is hazy we can certainly see some of this will need to be fed into the demand chain to keep the prices stable. However, as we have seen in Palladium, this can only work for a limited amount of time.


Global Nickel market records 38.7k tonne deficit in Jan-Apr 2019

LONDON (Scrap Register): World nickel market was in deficit during January to April 2019 with apparent demand exceeding production by 38.7k tonnes, the World Bureau of Metal Statistics (WBMS) said in its latest report.

In the whole of 2018 the calculated deficit was 90k tonnes.

Reported stocks held in the LME at the end of April 2019 were 33.3k tonnes lower than at the end of the previous year.

Refined production in January to April 2019 totalled 697.6k tonnes and demand was 736.2k tonnes. Mine production during January to April was 768.8k tonnes, 75k tonnes above the comparable 2018 total.

Chinese smelter/refinery output increased by 25k tonnes compared with 2018 and apparent demand was 36k tonnes higher than in the previous year.

World apparent demand was 9k tonnes higher than the previous year. No allowance is made in the consumption calculation for unreported stock changes.

In April 2019, nickel smelter/refinery production was 189.6k tonnes and consumption was 207.8k tonnes.