Why recovery in Nickel price won’t be easy to come by?

Nickel price was trading around $50,000/ton before financial crisis and after six years from the crisis and so much of stimulus from global central banks, Nickel is hovering around $10,000/ton.

Nickel price will not be recovering any time soon, especially with Chinese economic slowdown.

• After massive drop in crisis, close to $8000/ton, Nickel price posed a came back to trade around $29,000/ton by end of 2011, however recovery has soured since then and price is now at $10,000/ton and still showing further downside bias.

Why Nickel price recovery still remains far-fetched idea?

• The answer lies in usage of Nickel. About 62% of the world nickel production is being used for stainless-steel production, followed by non-ferrous alloys (13%), electroplating (8%) and others (17%).

• With Chinese economic slowdown price of price of steel has taken massive hit and the way Chinese demand for steel is slowing down due to overall slowdown in infrastructure spending, demand is unlikely to recover.

• China by latest measure still accounts for 50% of global Nickel consumption and 45% of total Steel. Naturally further slowdown is very much likely to hit prices further.