Ann: Blackstone Signs Offtake MOU for Refinery Byproduct, page-16

I posted this in the CTM chat too, so please skip it if you read it there.

PT Mardeka an Indonesian metal producer, which own and operate Ni laterite mines, an Hpal facility and a chemical facility jointly with Tsingshan and CATL are bleeding money left and right. Their AISC for q1 2023 for nickel pig iron (!) was $15,436. Just for reference, current Ni spot price is $15,934, which means they are quite possibly running on loss and they can't even make enough money to cover the gigantic project capex, let alone making any profit. Chinese either keep copping massive losses in Indonesia being somewhere in 2nd or 3rd quarter on the Ni cost curve (loss making area) or they have to soon scale back their operations massively and let demand and supply balance each other out.

Chinese producers literally use anything to boost commodity supply to drive the price down of strategic commodities required for EVs. We can see the advent of domestic Chinese Lepidolite & African DSO based lithium and laterite based nickel production, both which require extensive energy and more time to process, resulting in inefficient, dirty and loss making operations with potentialy more impurities. The end goal here IMO is nothing more than decreasing competition (think about recent bankruptcies, care & maintenance) and devalue existing assets, so they could buy them for pennies in the near future. I urge everyone not to fall for this massive bluff, because they can't keep producing laterite based nickel and lepidolite based lithium on these commodity prices.

Source:
https://merdekacoppergold.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/MDKA-Q1-23-Activities-Report_2023.05.09_vF.pdf