The “Winter Olympics” has a limited impact on ferronickel production. There are other reasons for the reduction of production in the Spring Festival.
1、 Nickel iron smelting around the venue
According to the investigation, among the ferronickel smelting enterprises around the venue of the Winter Olympic Games, a factory in Hebei received a local red warning notice and reduced its production by about 40% from December 15 to the end of December; Due to equipment aging, a factory in Liaoning is expected to start year-end maintenance in January 2022 and resume production in March. The monthly rated capacity of medium and high nickel iron in the above factories is about 54000 physical tons, accounting for only nearly 9% of the total physical tons of medium and high nickel iron in China.
2、 Smelting of production equipment mainly affected by environmental protection
At present, blast furnace equipment is greatly affected by environmental protection, and low nickel iron production equipment is used in ferronickel smelting process. According to Mysteel’s research, in the domestic ferronickel production in 2021, the nickel metal output of blast furnace process accounted for only 19%.
3、 Cost pressure + demand reduction expectation, domestic ferronickel plants have successively reduced production
3.1 With cost support, there is limited downward space for ferronickel prices
3.2 Upstream and downstream double extrusion, ferronickel plant may take the initiative to reduce production
3.3 The output reduction of high nickel iron is less than that of stainless steel, but the price of stainless steel continues to rise. With the support of nickel ore, the price of nickel iron is easy to rise but difficult to fall
Post time: Jan-06-2022