Nickel · Origin deep dive
LME cash nickel (Class 1), in-warehouse
Full-plate/briquette Class 1 reference
Warranted Class 1 sits mainly in Rotterdam, Singapore, Kaohsiung and Malaysian sheds, the deliverable core of the contract.
Full-plate cathode, cut cathode and briquettes at 99.8% minimum, with newly fast-tracked Chinese brands broadening deliverable supply.
Warrant trading with physical exit by cancellation; briquettes move in drums and big-bags, cathodes in banded pallets.
Stainless mills needing pure units, superalloy melters and plating houses, plus traders financing stock through the spreads.
Flows follow spread structure and brand-listing waves rather than seasons; the 2022 squeeze still shapes position limits and liquidity.
Class 1 versus Class 2 surplus dynamics, new Chinese brand listings and residual post-squeeze liquidity concerns move warrant values.
Nickel sulphate premium over metal for cathode precursors
Traded ex-works Chinese chemical plants clustered near precursor hubs in Hunan, Zhejiang and Guangxi rather than seaborne ports.
Battery-grade nickel sulphate hexahydrate, roughly 22% nickel, specified on crystal purity and trace metals for cathode precursor feed.
Bagged crystal or solution moved by truck to precursor plants; increasingly made from MHP dissolution rather than briquette.
Precursor and cathode makers in the CATL and Korean supply chains feeding high-nickel NCM chemistries.
Tracks EV production ramps into fourth-quarter delivery pushes and subsidy deadlines, sagging through the first-quarter Chinese holiday lull.
The sulphate-to-metal spread flips sign with MHP availability and EV demand; LFP substitution steadily erodes nickel intensity.
Deliverable but buyers cautious — small discount
Metal moves via Dudinka and Murmansk on Arctic ice-class vessels toward Rotterdam, with growing railed flows to China.
Benchmark Class 1 full-plate cathode from Norilsk and Kola refining; post-April-2024 production is barred from new LME warrants.
Long-term offtakes and eastbound redirection dominate; older-production metal remains a large share of warranted LME inventory.
Chinese refiners and traders plus contract-bound European consumers; many Western stainless and alloy buyers self-sanction.
Arctic shipping ice windows nudge logistics, but sanction deadlines and exchange rule dates matter far more than seasons.
Sanctions escalation, LME eligibility rules and the breadth of buyer self-sanctioning set the Nornickel discount to exchange nickel.
Mixed hydroxide for batteries — payable discount to metal
Shipped from HPAL hubs at Obi Island, Morowali and Weda Bay industrial parks direct to Chinese refinery berths.
Mixed hydroxide precipitate around 35-40% nickel with cobalt credits, an intermediate priced as payable percentage of LME.
Bagged and containerised wet cake shipped to Chinese sulphate refiners; payables negotiated against LME nickel with cobalt uplift.
Chinese battery-chain refiners — Huayou, GEM, CNGR — converting MHP into sulphate and precursor for cathode plants.
New HPAL train ramp-ups and RKAB mining quota approvals set supply cadence more than any weather-driven seasonality.
Indonesian ore quota policy, HPAL project reliability, cobalt payables and Chinese refinery margins move the MHP payable discount.
Nickel pig iron — huge RKEF supply well under Class 1
Loaded from Morowali and Weda Bay park jetties, shipped direct to stainless mills in China and Indonesia.
Nickel pig iron at roughly 10-14% nickel in iron, a Class 2 product priced per nickel unit below LME.
Bulk NPI cargoes feed directly into RKEF-linked stainless melt shops, bypassing exchange deliverability entirely.
Tsingshan-orbit and Chinese stainless mills; conversion to matte lets surplus NPI leak into the battery chain when spreads pay.
Follows stainless production schedules, Chinese mill restocking cycles and Indonesian quota releases rather than natural seasonality.
The NPI-to-Class-1 discount drives the whole nickel curve; ore quotas, coal power costs and stainless margins reprice it.