Nickel price shock & risks
Indonesia issued a ministerial decree on April 15 that raises the nickel‑ore benchmark formula and lifts the correction factor for 1.6% grade ore to about 30%, a change miners welcomed but processors say raises feedstock costs. (mysteel.net) Repeated operational failures in nickel waste handling — including a February tailings landslide that destroyed heavy equipment — are also under scrutiny, highlighting environmental and oversight gaps in the sector. (news.mongabay.com)
Indonesia is rewriting how nickel ore is priced just as a new waste failure is forcing fresh scrutiny on the industry’s operating risks. (minerba.esdm.go.id) Indonesia’s Energy and Mineral Resources Ministry said Decree No. 144 of 2026 takes effect on April 15, 2026. The ministry said it revises the nickel ore benchmark price formula by adjusting the corrective factor and adding iron, cobalt and chromium to the calculation. (minerba.esdm.go.id) The ministry also shifted ore pricing units from U.S. dollars per dry metric ton to U.S. dollars per wet metric ton and told miners to coordinate with surveyors so ore assays include nickel, cobalt, iron, chromium and moisture data. (minerba.esdm.go.id) Miners had pushed for a formula change for months. Mysteel reported in December 2025 that the Indonesian Nickel Miners Association expected the revision to recognize byproduct value in cobalt and iron and increase state royalty revenue. (mysteel.net) Nickel matters far beyond Indonesian mines. The United States Geological Survey said Indonesia increased nickel output in 2024 while global mine production was about 3.7 million tons, and the International Energy Agency says nickel is a key input for both stainless steel and electric-vehicle batteries. (pubs.usgs.gov) (iea.org) At the same time, the industry is dealing with the mess left after a February 18 waste landslide at the Indonesia Morowali Industrial Park in Central Sulawesi. Reuters and Bloomberg reported that the slide buried heavy equipment, killed one worker and halted operations at PT QMB New Energy Materials. (marketscreener.com) (bloomberg.com) Bloomberg reported on March 9 that four Chinese-run high-pressure acid leaching plants at Morowali had shut temporarily after the landslide. Those plants account for about 30% of Indonesia’s high-pressure acid leaching capacity, according to people cited by Bloomberg. (bloomberg.com) Mongabay reported on April 13 that the Morowali slide renewed questions about “dry stack” tailings, a method meant to store filtered mine waste in compacted piles rather than ponds. The report said experts linked the failure to liquefaction risk under poor drainage, weak oversight and heavy rainfall. (news.mongabay.com) The companies involved have not all spoken in public with the same level of detail. Bloomberg said GEM, Tsingshan and the Morowali park did not respond to its requests for comment, while Merdeka Battery Materials declined to comment. (bloomberg.com) Indonesia’s new pricing rule and Morowali’s waste failures now sit on the same balance sheet: higher ore values for miners, higher feedstock costs for processors, and tighter scrutiny of how the world’s biggest nickel producer handles the waste left behind. (minerba.esdm.go.id) (news.mongabay.com)
