On August 6, the average price of SMM battery-grade nickel sulphate stayed flat.
From the cost side, nickel prices dropped sharply due to news about Indonesian nickel ore quotas, which lowered spot production costs for nickel sulphate. From the supply side, the tight supply situation for intermediate products remained unchanged; MHP payables and prices of auxiliary materials such as sulphuric acid remained high, and with the rebound in nickel prices, some enterprises showed willingness to hold prices firm. From the demand side, recently some downstream companies mainly relied on long-term contracts, while the sentiment for building spot inventories was relatively weak and their acceptance of nickel salt prices was relatively low. Today, the Willingness to Sell Sentiment Factor for upstream nickel salt smelters was 1.8, the Willingness to Purchase Sentiment Factor for downstream precursor plants was 2.6, and the Integrated Enterprise Sentiment Factor was 2.5 (historical data can be accessed by logging into the database).
Looking ahead, activity in the spot cargo market is expected to remain weak in the short term, and nickel sulphate prices will come under overall pressure.
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