What is moving the price right now?

The most instructive news of the week came not from the exchange but from Helsinki. Outokumpu's chief financial officer Marc-Simon Schaar said on 30 July that while the EU trade measures are lifting demand for European stainless production, higher costs for scrap, freight and fuel are consuming the improvement. The Finnish producer's European business earned an adjusted EUR 17 million in the second quarter, after a EUR 13 million loss in Q1 and barely above the EUR 16 million of a year earlier. Stronger demand for local output has also sharply raised demand for scrap, the main raw material of European mills, while subdued end demand generates less scrap; on top of that, state aid of roughly EUR 35 to 40 million a year for emissions trading costs has ended (SMM, 31 July). For buyers this means: stainless costs are rising even without the nickel price.

The nickel price itself keeps working higher. LME cash closed at 17,100 USD/t on 31 July, up 5.1 percent on end-June. More notable is the foundation: since 20 July, LME stocks have been falling noticeably for the first time in months, from 273,222 t to 266,172 t. Stocks had held stubbornly at 275,000 to 288,000 t since the start of the year; a sustained drawdown would be this year's first physical tightness signal.

Structurally, the West has put forward an answer to supply concentration: Canada Nickel received the positive federal decision for its Crawford project in Ontario on 31 July, the first mining approval under Canada's amended assessment regime. The construction decision is targeted for 2027, the mine designed for 41 years, and Crawford would also be North America's only primary chromium source (SMM, 31 July). It changes little this decade, though, about the IEA's diagnosis that in nickel practically all supply growth comes from the dominant supplier, Indonesia.

In Jakarta, the mid-July line holds: no broad increase in ore quotas, only limited additional volumes for smelters with acute feedstock shortages, and those allocations are still pending. PT Weda Bay remains partly in care-and-maintenance, and the Gulf escalation keeps the sulphur risk for HPAL production open, whose acid requirements depend heavily on imports from the Middle East.

The counterweights remain high overall inventories and sluggish stainless spot demand in China. The INSG deficit of 32,000 t for 2026 remains the valid balance reference, but works only medium term.

What we watch: the pace of the LME stock drawdown, the concrete additional allocations in Indonesia, and European scrap prices as the second cost driver alongside the LME.