Indonesia’s imports of nickel ore surged to 9.3 million metric tons in the first ten months of 2024, more than 50 times the corresponding figure of 161,917 tons for the year earlier period, the statistics bureau said on Friday.
The world’s biggest nickel producer has bought record volumes of the ore from the Philippines since April as smelter demand rose and Jakarta delayed the issue of mining quotas with heavy rains hurting mining activity, Reuters reported.
Alexander Barus, chief executive officer at nickel-focused Indonesia Morowali Industrial Park, said the imports were ‘a rational business decision’ made by owners and management of domestic smelters.
“Domestic ore supply is lower than demand that reached 200 million tons per year for all specifications. Maybe because of the delay in nickel RKAB issuance,” Barus said, referring to the quotas.
Imports of nickel ore during January to October mostly came from the Philippines and China, for a total value of $406 million, up from $7.1 million a year earlier.
Indonesia changed the way it issued mining quotas this year, which affected nearly all miners in the resource-rich country. In June, authorities said they had issued 240 million metric tons of output quotas for the next three years.
However, ore shortages seemed to have continued later into the year. Top nickel producer China’s Tsingshan has cut its Indonesia ferronickel output because of ore shortage, two sources with knowledge of the matter told Reuters in September.
Indonesian authorities have defended the nickel ore quota, saying volumes approved were more than enough for smelters.
(By Bernadette Christina and Stefanno Sulaiman; Editing by Gayatri Suroyo, Clarence Fernandez and Kirsten Donovan)
