Nickel Metal Chain™
· ₹1,317.73/kg today
From mine to market: how Nickel moves through the global economy.
Data year: 2025 · Chain data last reviewed: 9 September 2026 · not a live feed — see methodology.
How Nickel Moves Through the Economy
Each stage below is a real, cited figure — click any stage for its full description and source.
Mining Mining / Extraction
Nickel is mined from sulfide or laterite ores, then concentrated into matte or mixed hydroxide precipitate for further processing.
Indonesia is the single largest nickel-mining country, accounting for an estimated 66.7% of world mine production. Concentration: High
High confidenceSource: USGS Mineral Commodity Summaries (via MetalsCost Metal Reserves) (2025)
Refining Processing / Refining
Nickel intermediates are refined into Class 1 (high-purity) or Class 2 nickel products for stainless steel and battery use.
Indonesia's share of global refined nickel supply rose sharply from about 23% in 2020 to roughly 37% in 2023, accounting for an estimated 90% of global supply growth over that period. Concentration: Moderate
High confidenceSource: IEA, Global Critical Minerals Outlook 2024 — view (2023)
Stainless Steel & Batteries Manufacturing / End Use
Refined nickel goes mainly into stainless steel, with a fast-growing share now going into EV battery cathodes.
Stainless steel accounts for an estimated 65-70% of primary nickel demand; battery demand has grown to roughly 16-17%, up from about 6% in 2018. Concentration: High
Medium confidenceSource: International Nickel Study Group data (via industry secondary reporting) (2024)
Supply Chain at a Glance
Current Bottleneck
Mining is significantly more concentrated than Refining: Indonesia accounts for 66.7%, versus Indonesia's 37% of Refining.
This is a plain comparison of two real, cited concentration figures — not a synthetic weighted risk score. See how this is determined.
Stainless Steel's Backbone
Stainless steel remains the largest single use for nickel by a wide margin, even as EV battery chemistries (nickel-rich cathodes) have grown fast enough to reshape expectations for future demand — the two markets pull on the same metal for very different reasons.
The Week the Market Broke
In March 2022, a short squeeze more than doubled nickel prices within hours, forcing the LME to suspend nickel trading for the first time in decades and cancel a full day of trades — still one of the most debated episodes in modern metals-market history.
Indonesia Rebuilt the Battery-Nickel Map
Indonesia's rapid build-out of High Pressure Acid Leach (HPAL) processing plants — a technology that lets lower-grade nickel ore be refined into the battery-grade nickel EV makers actually need — has been one of the more consequential supply-chain shifts in any metal tracked here, turning a country once known mainly for stainless-steel-grade ore into a major battery-materials supplier within the space of a few years.
Did You Know?
Indonesia's rapid rise as a nickel producer and processor over the past decade has reshaped global supply more than almost any other single-country shift in this dataset — despite Indonesia not being one of this site's 22 tracked countries.
Frequently Asked Questions
Indonesia is the single largest nickel-producing country, accounting for an estimated 66.7% of world mine production. See the full country-by-country breakdown.
Mining is significantly more concentrated than Refining: Indonesia accounts for 66.7%, versus Indonesia's 37% of Refining.
The Nickel price in India today is ₹1,317.73 per kilogram as of October 16, 2026. See the live price and chart.
Metal Chain™ is an analytical framework developed by MetalsCost. Concentration figures and the current-bottleneck comparison are estimates derived from available public data and a documented methodology — they are not investment advice or a guaranteed forecast. See the methodology page for data sources and calculation details.
