Asian nickel prices rise significantly on Monday

by Gerber Group | Sep 30, 2024

30 September 2024 – Nickel prices on the Asian commodity exchange SHFE rose sharply on Monday with a whopping gain of more than 3.2%. Stainless steel prices in China rose in response. Aluminium: Is the European Union rattling its sabre at Russia again or will the EU remain despondent as it did with semi-finished steel products?

Nickel prices on the Asian commodity exchange SHFE rose sharply on Monday with a whopping plus of more than 3.2%. The SHFE contract NI2411 thus improved to almost USD 20,000/MT. Spot prices for nickel also benefited from this and rose by up to 3%.

Nickel prices at the London LME had already recorded further gains on Friday and were up by more than one per cent at the start of trading today and are currently back above USD 17,200/MT.

In response to the rise in nickel prices, Chinese spot market prices for stainless steel have also risen. The nickel-containing 300 series rose by more than 1 per cent. However, the nickel-free 400 series also benefited from the market sentiment, with prices rising by around 0.7%.

The European Union is currently planning its 15th package of sanctions against Russia. In addition to sabre-rattling towards Russia, possible sanctions against Russian primary aluminium are once again on the negotiating table. In previous sanctions packages, however, the member states were unable to reach agreement on this issue and so measures were repeatedly postponed. It remains to be seen whether the EU has the courage this time (or not) to impose new sanctions against Russia or whether it will once again allow itself to be pulled over by lobbyists.

The European Union generally finds it difficult to enforce sanctions on semi-finished products. This can be clearly seen in the example of steel slabs and hot rolled coil (HRC, HS Code 7208). While Russia was one of the most important suppliers of HRC to Europe for many years, HRC was quickly subject to sanctions.

However, the EU has not only come up with a complicated set of sanctions rules for steel slabs, which are considered a primary product for HRC, which continue to allow imports from Russia almost unchecked, but has also set long deadlines for certain sanctions against these products to take effect.

As a result, EU steel manufacturers continue to buy several million tonnes of steel slabs (HS Code 7207) of Russian origin cheaply and at the same time try to cut off domestic steel consumers from other origins with anti-dumping investigations against HRC. In 2023 alone, 3.1 million tonnes of Russian slabs flowed into the EU. The figure for the first half of 2024 was already more than 1.7 million tonnes, according to data from the EU statistics authority EUROSTAT.

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