Nickel Asia Corp. is in talks to unload its minority stake in a key processing plant to Japan’s Sumitomo Metal Mining Co. as the Philippines’ top producer of the metal focuses on upstream mining and renewable energy businesses.

Average daily volumes at the London Metal Exchange (LME), the world’s largest and oldest metals forum, gained 18% to 664,698 lots in 2024 with nickel volumes surging by 59%, the exchange said on Tuesday.

WBMS: Global refined nickel oversupply by 21,900 tons in October 2024

Russian mining and metals giant Nornickel plans to return to a positive free cash flow in 2025 but will not distribute dividends before then, its CEO and major shareholder Vladimir Potanin said on Saturday.

Russia’s Nornickel, the world’s largest producer of palladium and a major producer of refined nickel, said on Tuesday it sees the global nickel market maintaining a surplus of 150,000 metric tons in 2024-2025.

According to the statistics, the production of refined nickel in China in November 2024 was 33,510 tons, an increase of 8.62% from the previous month and 48.64% from the same period last year.

The latest report published by the World Metal Statistics Bureau (WBMS) shows that in September 2024, the global refined nickel production was 287,896 tons, the consumption was 285,062 tons, and the supply surplus was 2,834 tons.

Japanese battery industry is targeting cleaner nickel, cobalt and copper from Tanzania’s Kabanga Nickel project, managed by Tembo Nickel.