It's a neat summation of what the Chinese are doing and will...

It's a neat summation of what the Chinese are doing and will continue to do in order to minimise input costs for the end-product. It theoretically* doesn't doesn't necessarily spell the death knell for AU Ni sulphides, but in practical terms I believe that's what will happen.

*Theoretically because as long as an AU sulphide producer is around the bottom quartile of the cost curve (i.e. lowest 25%) then it should remain commercially viable. IGO's Nova fits that bill. However, it's got a v.limited mine life and with longer-term spot prices in the range already cited there will be zero incentivisation to risk exploration money on an already difficult-to-find HG mineralisation that also has scale. In practical terms, the WA sector will simply wither.

The big question for me is just how long BHP is prepared to wait and see before pulling the pin. Naturally, with its large vertically integrated ops in WA, it needs to think with a long-term mindset. Since taking over the Ni assets from WMC it has seen the primary use Ni market (Class 1 Ni, traditionally used for s/steel) hollowed-out by Chinese Ni disruption v1.0 (i.e. Ni laterite NPI substitution), which has continued to dominate over the past 15+ years and expected to continue well beyond. BHP held on and doubled-down, under the assessment/promise of a strong resurgence for Class 1 sulphides with an emerging secondary use in Ni-rich batteries. BHP is now staring down the barrel of Chinese Ni disruption v2.0 (i.e. commercially viable Ni laterite-to-matte conversion to feed the battery market). They've seen the prequel of this movie before in v1.0. Imo, it will very much inform their expectations around the LT roadmap ahead, which will drive their decision-making.