Indonesia Is Now the Biggest Nickel Processor. The Smelters Changed Hands Less

Indonesia Is Now the Biggest Nickel Processor. The Smelters Changed Hands Less

Indonesia processed 1.41 million tonnes of nickel in 2023, having overtaken China in 2021 to become the world's largest producer. Before 2015 its line on this chart sat close to zero.

A single ban did most of the work. In January 2020 Indonesia stopped all exports of raw nickel ore, so anyone wanting Indonesian nickel had to smelt it inside Indonesia, and processing capacity moved from China to Sulawesi. What moved was the furnaces, not the ownership. Chinese companies control roughly 75% of Indonesia's nickel refining capacity, with Tsingshan Holding Group and Jiangsu Delong alone accounting for more than 70%, and Tsingshan holding about 66% of the Morowali industrial park, the country's largest nickel complex. China's own processed output dipped and then recovered over the same period, because its ore supply was cut off and it began importing semi-processed material from Indonesia instead.

One distinction often gets skipped. Most Indonesian output is nickel pig iron and ferronickel for stainless steel, not the high-purity nickel batteries need, and the two do not convert directly into each other. The ranking also uses 2023 estimates rather than the most recent year.

Source: British Geological Survey World Mineral Statistics and the US International Trade Commission (Image: @OurWorldInData)