Nickel Market Prospects in the Face of Oversupply and Chinese Pig Nickel

Mineweb reports an interview with Andrew Mitchell who says the future of nickel is reliant on China and how the country develops.

Brook Hunt’s Principal Nickel Analyst, Andrew Mitchell says,

For the rest of the year, as I mentioned, Q4 we are looking at it better from a demand perspective – it’s always slower in the summer period – by Q4 orders do start to pick up.  The mills at the moment are generally saying that orders are acceptable and that they’re looking at two month delivery times which they see  is being reasonable.  That said, utilisation rates are probably down to about anywhere between 50% and 70% at the moment so if they were running at high utilisation they could probably bring those delivery times down.  But at the moment it’s tough, particularly looking at what’s going to happen potentially in the next few years in terms of the supply-demand situation.

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