Current Nickel Price and Nickel Rate with Chart

The Greater Part Goes Into Stainless Steel

Nickel is in the first place not a product in its own right but an ingredient. By far the largest part of world production goes into stainless steels, where nickel together with chromium provides the corrosion resistance — the familiar designation 18/10 stands for 18 per cent chromium and 10 per cent nickel.

That makes the nickel price a mirror of the stainless-steel cycle: construction, plant engineering, kitchen and household appliances, chemical apparatus. Wherever things are built rust-free, nickel is consumed.

Alongside that, a second customer has grown in recent years: batteries. In the common cathode chemistries for electric vehicles nickel is the main constituent, and development has moved towards ever higher nickel contents — because that raises energy density.

The Exchange Standstill of 2022

In March 2022 something happened at the London Metal Exchange that had not happened in that form before: the nickel price multiplied within two days, the exchange suspended trading and declared deals that had already been concluded void.

The trigger was a very large short position that had to be covered as prices rose, driving the price further up in the process. When trading was resumed days later, confidence in price formation was damaged, and turnover stayed below its earlier level for a long time.

The episode is visible in our series: at the beginning of March 2022 the dollar quote climbs from around 25,000 to just under 62,000 dollars a tonne, and the decisive move falls on two trading days. After that the provider only repeated the figure: from 10 March to 26 August there are 122 trading days with seven different values and a dispersion of 0.03 per cent, against 6.6 per cent in the same months a year earlier.

We neither smooth that stretch nor fill it with estimated values: the standstill the provider published instead of a market is carried as a gap, so the chart shows no line there rather than a flat one. What we deliberately keep are the two moves that really happened — the climb into the plateau at the beginning of March and the fall out of it on 29 August, from just under 62,000 to 21,500 dollars a tonne. Where exactly the cut runs is a judgement; for any evaluation the 2022 figures should be read with care.

Where Nickel Comes From

Mining is far more concentrated geographically than for aluminium or zinc. Indonesia has greatly expanded its share in recent years, among other things through an export ban on unprocessed ore that was meant to force processors into the country.

That shifts not only quantities but qualities: nickel from laterite ores suits stainless steel well, but not without further work the batteries that need very pure nickel sulphate. The market consequently breaks into segments that can develop differently.

For price formation that means the exchange quote maps a part of the market, not the whole of it. Anyone who needs battery-grade nickel may under some circumstances pay a different price from the one the exchange shows.

The Metal So Many People React Allergically To

Nickel is the most common contact allergen of all. Estimates suggest that a considerable part of the population reacts to it — women distinctly more often than men, which has to do with earrings and costume jewellery.

European rules have therefore long limited how much nickel may be released from objects that have prolonged contact with the skin: jewellery, watch cases, spectacle frames, zips, buttons. It is not the nickel content that is capped but the release.

For precious-metal jewellery that is the reason why white gold is today usually decolourised with palladium rather than with nickel. Anyone who reacts sensitively is on safer ground with platinum or palladium; both are regarded as kind to the skin.