While demon nickel's frenzy was temporarily halted when the LME suspended trading in nickel futures, the impact of lunni hitting 100,000 a tonne was profound as Indonesia, the world's largest nickel producer, decided to ramp up production of the metal.
Indonesia planea aumentar su producción de níquel en 393,000 a 400,000 toneladas este año, elevando la producción total a 1,4 millones de toneladas, y agregar otras 500,000 toneladas de capacidad anual el próximo año, dijo Luhut Panjaitan, ministro coordinador de inversiones y asuntos marítimos, en una entrevista el miércoles.
"We believe that with this additional capacity, we can more than offset any loss of supply from Russia or elsewhere."
Meanwhile, Indonesia will monitor "unprecedented" market conditions to decide whether to impose export duties on nickel iron and pig iron containing nickel. "We need to be mindful of the impact on consumers," Panjaitan said. "We don't want to kill the ev battery industry, and we don't want nickel prices to derail our goal of producing lithium batteries by early 2024."
Septian HarioSeto, Indonesia's deputy minister of Marine and Investment Affairs, said on January 22 that the government might impose a tax on exports of nickel iron and pig iron containing nickel from this year. If the nickel price is above 15,000 / ton, a 2 percent tax may be levied, and the tax increases with the nickel price. The main purpose of the tax is to promote investment in the downstream nickel industry.
