Obviously, Tsingshan got caught by the invasion of...

Obviously, Tsingshan got caught by the invasion of Ukraine…

Exactly, yeah.

But obviously, it was an unwise short in the end, but the pricehas now – I mean, as March began, the price was around $25,000 a ton andnow it’s $35,000, do you think that that’s a sustainable – is it still a falsemarket or do you think that it’s starting to become real now, there’s realprice discovery going on?

I think it’s still very much a false market. I had a call fromone of the big trading houses the other day and just filling me in on whatthey’re seeing and I think it is still very much a false market at the moment.There’s not a lot of trades going through. It’s a paper squeeze and whetherthey’ll come back and have another go, it looks like maybe they will.

What do you mean, have another go?

Well, just in terms of obviously the short position is still outthere, there’s still 140,000 tonnes and whether they’ll come back and try andcreate another squeeze. Obviously, the LME has put in limit-ups and those typesof things, but I still think it’s very much there’s still a bit to play outuntil we have a proper market, I think, at this point in time at these pricesand you’re hearing people aren’t transacting just because of the volatility ofthe price and because of where the price currently sits at this point in time,I think you’re right. People would be very comfortable with a $25,000 tomaximum $28,000 nickel price, I think anything above that, it’s not a realmarket.

It still seems to have been, just from a layperson external, tohave been a pretty unwise short position to take given the extra demand that’scoming through for all battery minerals. There’s a lot of interest in nickeland cobalt and graphite and lithium obviously, all those things at the momentparticularly.

Yeah, look, as we’ve said, I think it was perhaps made a littleearly. What we do know and what we have seen in terms of the growth inIndonesia that Tsingshan’s been able to achieve, this year they’ll produce850,000 tonnes of nickel at nickel pig iron, growing to over a million tonnesand the nickel market itself is only 2.5 million tonnes in size. That gives yousome idea of just the speed and the growth these guys are able to achieve. Withthe class one nickel and the high-pressure acid leach plants, given that theyat first look is commissioning very well and should be ramped up to thenameplate capacity in the coming months, I think the intention was, given howthings have operated historically, you probably would have seen a very largerollout of a large number of those plants, with probably 300,000 to 600,000tonnes in consolidated capacity. And look, it’s already started with theVolkswagen-Tsingshan joint venture and I’d expect to see a lot more of those.

As more of those plants come online, then you won’t see the sortof shortages that people are predicting for class one nickel and you’ll startto see a steady supply of consistent – these guys, their whole focus is to bethe lowest-cost producer and so…

I suppose, the old saying applies, which is that the best curefor high prices is high prices.