On February 2, the SMM battery-grade nickel sulphate index price was 32,078 yuan/mt, with the quotation range for battery-grade nickel sulphate at 31,800-33,000 yuan/mt. The average price pulled back WoW.
Cost side, panic selling in the commodity market led to a significant decline in nickel prices, and the immediate production cost of nickel sulphate pulled back. Supply side, as nickel prices remained high overall recently, some nickel salt producers, affected by expectations of rising raw material costs, still held prices firm. Demand side, approaching the Chinese New Year, some producers had already stocked up on raw materials for the holiday and adopted a wait-and-see stance towards the highly volatile nickel prices, showing weak acceptance of high-priced nickel salt. Today, the willingness to sell sentiment factor for upstream nickel salt smelters was 1.9, the purchasing sentiment factor for downstream precursor plants was 2.7, and the sentiment factor for integrated enterprises was 2.5 (historical data available in the database).
Looking ahead, if nickel prices decline further, cost support is expected to weaken.
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