Last year the country produced 63% of the world’s nickel, up from 28% in 2020, and that share could easily rise to 75% within the next three to five years, according to Jim Lennon, a London-based managing director of commodities at Australia’s Macquarie Group.
“It’s the only place with the huge reserve base, the only place with available capital deployed by Chinese banks to finance projects,” Lennon said by videophone. “In the rest of the world, producers are struggling to get off the ground.”
Between 2020 and 2024, Indonesia added 1.5 million tonnes of new supply to the market. Last year it churned out 2.25 million tonnes of nickel (finished and intermediates), a 16% year-on-year increase, weakening prices and triggering mine closures in other countries.
“The nickel market has been in large oversupply for the last three years,” Lennon said. “Enormous growth in Indonesia has killed the nickel…
