ANALYSIS: Difficult Future Ahead After BHP’s Nickel Shutdown

Analysis BHP has announced it’s mothballing its WA nickel mines and processing plant for at least three years, citing an “oversupply in the global nickel market.” But that masks a far bigger issue from which the mining giant is unlikely to recover: fierce competition from Indonesia, which has flooded the market with lower-grade metal and, as a result, has gone from accounting for about 6 percent of the world’s nickel to 53 percent currently. And that’s not likely to change because Indonesian and Filipino producers—in partnership with Chinese steelmakers—have developed new processing technology that allows them to supply the market at a price 30 percent less than Australia’s....