Wednesday, 18 Nov 2009 A senior analyst at Chinese state backed research group Antaike said on last weekend that China's real consumption of nickel may be higher than expected and rise 39.7% YoY to 447,000 tonnes in 2009.
Higher than expected production of stainless steel, the top use for nickel in China, the world's biggest producer of stainless steel, has prompted Antaike to raise its estimate for nickel consumption twice in two months.
This time, Antaike raised its consumption estimate by 10.6% from the previous forecast of 404,000 tonnes made in mid September because of a revised estimate of stainless steel production. In September, it raised the forecast by 18.8%.
Mr Xu Aidong said “We now believe stainless steel production will reach 9.7 million tonnes this year, from previous estimate of 9.12 million tonnes.”
He added that China may add 153,000 tonnes of nickel in stocks this year based on the 447,000 tonne consumption forecast, without providing an estimate of total stocks in China, which used more than a fifth of the world's nickel production last year
Sourced from Reuters
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