LONDON – Nickel prices surged to their highest since 2011 as a supply deficit ate into stockpiles and investors looked ahead to rising demand from electric vehicles.
Benchmark nickel on the London Metal Exchange (LME) was up 0.1 percent at $22,205 a ton having earlier reached $22,935. It is up about 7 percent this week.
Prices have doubled since March 2020 but are well short of a record high of $51,800 reached in 2007.
Nickel is mostly used to make stainless steel. Batteries account for 5 percent of demand, but that could rise to 30 percent by 2040, said WisdomTree analyst Nitesh Shah.
“There is a broad realization of just how important nickel is in the energy transition. It’s very, very difficult to see how supply of class 1 nickel (used for batteries) can keep up with demand,” he said.
