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https://www.live wire markets.com/wires/soaring-ev-demand-suggests-nickel-poised-to-play-catch-up-to-lithium

Soaring EV demand suggests nickel poised to play catch-up to lithium

- A lack of ready to go new nickel mines is set to underpin increased investor interest.
- Unlike lithium, there is not a string of mothballed mines able to be turned on, and the preferred sulphide nickel is actually exceedingly difficult to find in meaningful amounts.
- Whatever the reason for investors running cold on nickel compared with lithium, there is good reason to think nickel is not far off being talked about in the same excited tones as lithium.
- As Macquarie’s commodities desk noted recently, the battery market for nickel is growing so rapidly (from 200,000t last year to as much as 1.3mt by 2030) that the supply of low-carbon units (i.e. not from NPI) is getting stretched.
- Putting the 1.3Mt demand potential by 2030 in context, the additional 1.1Mt requirement is the equivalent to 11 times what BHP’s Nickel West produces annually, or five times that of Russia’s mighty Norilsk, the world’s biggest producer.
- “The requirements for new nickel supply this decade is unprecedented in the history of the nickel market,” Macquarie said.