Stainless Steel News and Nickel Prices, Molybdenum, Metal Pricing, Ferrochrome
Daily Nickel/Stainless Steel Briefing
- Nickel closed Monday’s trading session at
$8.37/lb
($18,460/tonne). Indicators at 6:50 am CST today show nickel trading around $.03/lb 
higher. Stockpiles of nickel stored in LME licensed warehouses fell on Monday and ended that session just over the 220,100 tonne level. Surprisingly, cancelled warrants fell into the 23% range today. With the constant drop in inventory numbers, one would assume if future orders were keeping pace with current shipments, then cancelled warrants would be climbing slightly. In fact they started the month in the 26% range, and after 13 days of declines, and only one gain, warrants numbers continue to fall. Yesterday the US government warned US citizens against traveling to the United Kingdom and some other countries due to skyrocketing covid cases, coinciding with England’s so called ‘Freedom Day’. Nearly all lockdown restrictions in that country were lifted Monday, while cases spiked, the country recording more new covid cases over the past few days than any other nation in the world. Markets soured on the covid news, and many fell sharply yesterday, including base metals. Nerves appear to be less rattled this morning, with some enthusiasm back into trading numbers. Lots of news today. Koniambo, on New Caledonia, the only nickel mine that seemingly wasn’t making headlines weekly because of problems with the locals – is now being reported as having shut down two weeks ago, due to problems with the locals. Nornickel reports it produced its first batch of carbon neutral nickel, while Arcelor Mittal plans on building the world’s first carbon neutral steel plant in Spain. Updates are posting later this week. Stay safe out there and have a great day! - Average price of LME traded cash nickel so far this month – $8.40/lb
- LME nickel chart – here / Euro/US Dollar chart – here
Reports
- Reuters metals morning – Shanghai copper near 1-month low on virus worries – more
- Refinitiv Inside Commodities – pdf here
- ING The Commodities Feed – daily here
- SMM Evening Comment – more
- Barchart 304 Stainless Steel Scrap Index (lb) – $.3549
- SHFE Stainless Steel Futures (yuan) – 18,490
- Steel Founders’ Society of America CaSteel Reporter – pdf here
Why Stainless Steel
- Alloyed for Lasting Value video – here
- Self Repairing for Lasting Value video – here
- 100 Years of Stainless Steel Video – here
- Stainless steel: The role of nickel – here
- The Life of Nickel – pdf here
Monday’s market review – Demand doubts and dollar dent copper sentiment – Copper prices slipped to four-week lows on Monday as sentiment was dominated by a stronger dollar and worries about demand in top consumer China and plans to release copper and other industrial metals from Chinese reserves. – more
Russian Mining Giant Nornickel Says Produced 1st Batch Of Carbon-Neutral Nickel – Russia’s Nornickel metals company announced on Monday that it had produced its first batch of carbon-neutral nickel, ready to be shipped to customers. – more
Specialty Metals Report Red Hot – As with other commodity metals, the stainless steel segment is stressed as supply can’t keep up with surging demand. – more
China steel futures rise on output curbs, supply crunch – Shanghai steel rebar and hot-rolled coils futures rose on Monday amid concerns of supply crunch as top steel producer China stepped up production curbs, while utilisation rates of blast furnaces at key steel mills remain relatively low. – more
New Caledonia’s Koniambo plant still shut – An attempt by New Caledonia’s Koniambo nickel plant to resume operations has failed. The site has been blockaded for nearly two weeks by a group claiming the company’s tendering process sidelines local businesses. – more
ArcelorMittal to build first big zero-carbon steel plant in Spain – ArcelorMittal SA has signed a memorandum of understanding with the Spanish government for a 1 billion euro ($1.2 billion) investment to build the world’s first large-scale zero-carbon steel plant. – more
Supply chain concerns, higher steel prices seen increasing US PPA prices – North American renewable energy power purchase agreement prices continued to increase in the second quarter, LevelTen Energy said July 19, citing solar power industry supply chain hiccups and steel price increases pushing up wind power project costs. – more
Court orders MPCA to justify PolyMet permitting decision – The Minnesota Court of Appeals has ordered the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency (MPCA) to further explain its decision to grant an air quality permit for the proposed PolyMet nonferrous mine. – more
Vale reviews copper, nickel guidance amid labour, climate issues – Brazilian miner Vale said on Monday evening that it was reviewing its guidance for 2021 nickel and copper output as strikes and “extraordinary climate conditions” in Canada have materially affected production. – more
BHP reports record iron-ore outputs – Major BHP has reported record iron-ore production from its Western Australian operations, while the Olympic Dam operation, in South Australia, also posted its highest annual copper production since the mine was acquired in 2005, along with its highest ever gold production. – more
How Distributors Can Use Content to Increase Web Sessions – MRO distributor Quality Mill Supply was able to increase their web sessions 24x in only one year, driven by improved content on their e-commerce site’s product detail pages. – more
Courtesy AISI – In the week ending on July 17, 2021, domestic raw steel production was 1,859,000 net tons while the capability utilization rate was 84.1 percent. Production was 1,350,000 net tons in the week ending July 17, 2020 while the capability utilization then was 60.3 percent. The current week production represents a 37.7 percent increase from the same period in the previous year. – more
Other News
- Reuters The Day Ahead – pdf here
- SOS: Stranded and shattered seafarers threaten global supply lines – more
- U.S. Futures, Stocks Rise; Treasuries Resume Gains: Markets Wrap – more
Morning Stats and Prices
- What time is it in….? – more
- U.S. Steel Import Monitor – online here
- SIMA Melt & Pour Dashboard – online here
- US Economy At a Glance – more
- US Fed NY Weekly Economic Index – more
- Yesterday’s LME official prices here
- Shanghai Jinchuan nickel price – here
- India MCX Nickel Price – more
- Baltic Dry Index – chart
- COVID By The Numbers – here