According to foreign power news on April 9, Justin Werner, CEO of Australian-listed Nickel Industries, said on Tuesday that more than 25 global car and battery manufacturers expressed interest in buying nickel from its new plant in Indonesia.
The company's new high-pressure acid leaching (HPAL) smelter in Sulawesi will be completed in the second half of 2025 with an annual capacity of 7-80,000 tonnes.
"We attracted a lot of interest, but we weren't in a hurry to make a decision," Werner said. ”
Thanks to its low cost advantages, Indonesia has become a major supplier of nickel, accounting for more than half of the world's nickel production, and is expected to account for nearly three-quarters of global supply by the end of the decade.
Nickel Industries' HPAL plant will produce nickel cathode, as well as nickel cobalt hydroxide (MHP) and nickel sulphate used to make electric vehicle batteries.
The company is also looking for investors to sell up to a 25 percent stake in the plant.
Last year, oversupply caused nickel prices to fall by 45%, putting pressure on high-cost producers, including the world's top miner BHP Billiton and other Australian companies, who have called for a "green premium" on low-carbon nickel.
The London Metal Exchange (LME) has set 20 tonnes of carbon dioxide (CO2) per tonne of nickel as the threshold for low-carbon nickel, and Nickel Industries' HPAL plant will produce about 8 tonnes of CO2 for 1 tonne of nickel.
"We want to have a green premium and we are very confident that we will qualify," Werner said. But he added that car and battery makers don't want to pay a green premium. "They want lower prices," he said.
Australian mining tycoon Andrew Forrest said last month that the LME should divide its contracts into clean and non-clean categories to give customers more choice.
