The location of the second planned mill has not been announced.

At present, of the 17,244 tonnes of on-warrant nickel in LME warehouses in Rotterdam, briquette accounts for more than 92%.

A high backwardation continued to dampen import appetite, leading to thin liquidity, although offers were quoted higher.

Fastmarkets sources continued to insist that prices were in parity, as rare as the phenomenon is.

“As a nation are very clear and very respectful of our treaties and our agreements,” Hernando said.

The sites receiving ResponsibleSteel certification were POSCO’s Pohang and Gwangyang Steelworks in South Korea and Tata Steel’s Jamshedpur site in India.

The problem is that there are more than 13m tons of HRC capacity coming online or planned to come online in the next three years.

These include changes to the Emissions Trading System (ETS) and a new levy on imports under the Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM) to prevent carbon leakage.