Nickel Stocks At Low Level

Press, Volume CIX, Issue 32118, 14 October 1969, Page 29

Nickel Stocks At Low Level

Stocks of nickel in Christchurch are very low and industry is hard put to it to get by with the small quantities which are imported at high prices.

The nickel, used locally mainly for alloys in foundries and by nickel platers, is normally supplied by the International Nickel Company of Canada (Inco), which produces about 90 per cent of the free world’s requirements. Because of the strike by nickel miners in Canada—now in its sixth month stocks of nickel throughout the world are running low, and Christchurch users are on a one-third allocation. Small quantities of Russian nickel have found their way into the trade at inflated prices, but it is thought that this market has been frozen. A spokesman for the industry in Christchurch said last evening that the price of nickel had steadily increased from a low level of 75c per lb, and latest quotes were 600 c per lb. A Reuter report from London quotes the “Economist” as saying that the sooner Australia breaks the Canadian nickel monopoly the better. “In a month or so, large sections of British industry could be held to ransom by a few thousand Canadian miners,” the “Economist” says. “Even if the miners go back to work tomorrow—and at the moment the strike shows no sign of ending—-

there is going to be a very tight period over the next few months. “For the moment it is the small companies that are suffering. They are having trouble paying the astronomical prices on the free market, which have jumped from about £l5OO a ton a year ago to nearly £6OOO and are still rising. “The rest of the world depends largely on Russia and some other Eastern-bloc countries—and no-one knows just how much they have left to sell," the “Economist” says. Lord Melchett, chairman of the British Steel Corporation, has been pressing the Russians to sell more nickel to Britain, but the suspicion is that they are rationing exports in order not to defeat the price. “Thus, a ludicrous situation has developed in which, every three years, at the end of the Canadian labour contracts, the union involved, the United Steel Workers of America, goes on a long strike and the rest of the world is left helpless. In the long run, the Canadian monopoly should be broken by the new nickel discoveries in Australia. It may be a major producer by the mid-19705, with an output possibly as high as Canada’s.