The three-month futures price of nickel on the London Metal Exchange (LME) soared by US$913/ton yesterday (October 20), closing at US$20,963/ton, and the highest intraday hit US$21,235/ton. Also, the spot price rose greatly by US$915.5/ton, reaching US$21,046/ton. The futures price hit a new high since May 2014.
Meanwhile, LME’s market inventory of nickel continued dropping, down by 354 tons to 143,502 tons. The decrease in October has amounted to 13,560 tons so far.
According to market participants, the US dollar continued to weaken, and Vale’s nickel production had a year-on-year decrease of 22% to 30,200 tons in the third quarter, coupled with its lower forecast of nickel output at 165,000-170,000 tons this year, thus pushing up the nickel prices.
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Taiwan's stainless steel mills announced their prices for November and the increase was not as high as market expectations.
According to the mills, the raw material cost still remained high and they also considered the high inventory. They adjusted the price slightly for November. However, China's power rationing measures made the supply tight.
Besides, European mills increased the energy surcharge by EUR 130 to 200 for the high energy costs. Taiwan's mills decided to moderately reflect raw material costs by raising prices for November.
After that, downstream customers might have more competitiveness in the export market. It was expected that the export performance will be good during November/December.
Till 1st Nov, Nikel is till rising which make the stainless exporting price is very high comparing with previous offer. That means the cost of stainless steel industry is very high than before. In this condition, the retail price of related production must be higher. Nowadays, Covid-19 is still very danger in most countries, living cost is more and more higher, if this disease continue for a long time, there must have negative influence on steel industries.
Post time: Nov-02-2021