Nickel products in China

The nickel products in China are relatively simple, mainly electrolytic nickel, and the output of nickel oxide and nickel iron is very small. The price of electrolytic nickel is extremely expensive, which weakens its competitiveness in the stainless steel market. It is very common to use ferronickel as a nickel alloy for smelting stainless steel, alloy steel and alloy cast iron abroad, and the consumption of ferronickel is about 40%. The use of nickel iron alloy can reduce the consumption of metal nickel. The nickel pig iron industry in China came to the fore in the second half of 2005. In 2006, driven by the rising nickel price, the industry developed by leaps and bounds. According to the estimation of Antaike, the nickel bearing pig iron provided nearly 1/3 of the nickel of stainless steel in China in 2007. Before 2005, there was almost no production of nickel bearing pig iron in China.

Nickel products in China

Nickel is mainly used for the production of stainless steel. As one of the main nickel products, nickel iron is used for the production of stainless steel and other alloys. Nickel accounts for 47% of the production cost of stainless steel plants, and some stainless steel plants are using ferronickel to produce stainless steel rather than refining nickel due to the continuous sharp rise of nickel price.

From the regional perspective, the output of stainless steel in Asia, especially in China and India, has increased significantly. Since 2000, the demand for stainless steel in China has been rising rapidly. The apparent consumption of stainless steel increased from 540000 t in 1992 to 5100000 t in 2006. In 2007, China's stainless steel smelting capacity has reached 9.04 million. According to the statistics of the Stainless Steel Branch of China Special Steel Enterprises Association, in the first three quarters of 2009, China's crude stainless steel production increased by 37% year-on-year to 6.57 million tons. At the same time, the apparent consumption increased 45.8% to 6.24 million tons year on year; The import volume was nearly 1 million tons, up 4.3% year on year; The export volume was 476800 tons, down 45.5% year on year. It is expected that in the next 10 years, the stainless steel output of emerging developing countries such as China and India will shift from a high growth period to a stable growth period, and the stainless steel output will also enter a stable growth period. Therefore, the long-term growth of stainless steel production will continue to drive the continuous growth of ferronickel consumption.

With ferronickel playing a more and more important role in stainless steel smelting, the trend of China's monthly ferronickel and nickel ore imports is becoming increasingly important. It can be seen from the customs statistics that from January to June this year, China imported 9.8 million tons of nickel ore, 4.4 million tons more than the same period last year, 81.5% more than the same period last year; From January to June this year, China imported 70600 tons of ferronickel, a year-on-year decrease of 54800 tons and 43.7%. From the trend of monthly import data, the trend of nickel ore and ferronickel import volume is basically polarized. Since February this year, China's monthly import of nickel ore has risen continuously, and by June, the import of nickel ore in a single month had reached more than 2 million tons. On the contrary, the import of nickel iron in China not only showed a downward trend compared with the same period last year, but also went downhill after reaching 18600 tons in March. The import of nickel iron in a single month in May has dropped to 9700 tons, which is only slightly higher than the import of last year and January this year. On the one hand, the decline in ferronickel imports was impacted by the domestic production of nickel bearing pig iron with higher cost performance ratio, and on the other hand, it was related to the fact that the nickel price in the international market was higher than that in the domestic market in the first half of the year.