China's imports of refined nickel have fallen to levels last seen almost 20 years ago, when the country's build-out of industrial capacity was still in its infancy. The country's stainless steel mills now prefer nickel pig iron (NPI), an intermediate form of the metal that was rediscovered when the nickel price spiked to $51,800 per tonne in 2007. The largest supplier is Indonesia. China's burgeoning electric vehicle battery sector doesn't need high-purity Class I refined metal either. It is importing ever-growing volumes of other intermediate nickel products, also mostly coming from Indonesia. The two countries are ... (full story)