The recent devaluation of RMB by nearly 5% has triggered violent fluctuations in the global foreign exchange market and commodity market, and the price of LME nickel once fell to 9 100 USD/ton. However, the nickel price of Shanghai Futures Exchange has obviously resisted falling. From the market outlook, influenced by four factors, the nickel market will stabilize and rebound in the future.

First, the supply of nickel has been greatly reduced. Jinchuan Group produced electrolytic nickel12,970 tons in July, which was 6.0 1% lower than that in June. From August 10, Jean Nickel started the 45-day annual maintenance of equipment ahead of schedule, and suspended the production of electrolytic nickel and nickel sulfate. According to the statistics of domestic 12 electrolytic nickel smelters by relevant institutions, in the third quarter of 20 15, five electrolytic nickel smelters have stopped production due to maintenance, and the output in electrolytic nickel will be reduced by 10950 tons, which is 5 150 tons less than that in the second quarter.

Second, the nickel ore structure deteriorated again. According to the statistics of relevant institutions, as of August 14, the nickel mine inventory of major ports in China was15.95 million tons, a decrease of 565,438+million tons compared with the historical peak of 20 14. From the variety structure analysis of nickel content, the low-grade nickel ore below 1.4% is about 6.25 million tons, the medium-grade nickel ore between 1.5%- 1.7% is about 6.4 million tons, and the high-grade nickel ore above 1.8% is about 3.3 million tons. High-nickel ore accounts for only about 20% of the port inventory, which is completely different from the structure that high-nickel ore accounts for more than 90% of the inventory before the spring of 20 14.

Third, the output of ferronickel has been greatly reduced. In July this year, the national output of ferronickel was 452,700 physical tons, which was less than half of that of10.05 million physical tons in the same period of 20 14 years. The cumulative output of 6543810-July was 2.683 million physical tons, which was nearly 2/3 lower than that of 6.45 million physical tons in the same period of 20 14. Due to the change of ore source structure, the quality of ferronickel decreased obviously, and the nickel content of high-nickel iron decreased from 12%~ 15% to 8%~ 10%, which forced many stainless steel smelting enterprises to increase the consumption of refined nickel such as electrolytic nickel. Although the import of ferronickel in China increased by 18. 1 10,000 physical tons in the first half of the year, reaching 32 1 10,000 physical tons, compared with the reduction of domestic ferronickel production by nearly 4 million physical tons, the import increase is very insignificant.