LONDON (Commodity Online): According to BNP Paribas, a negative bias toward nickel relative to other base metals and nickel to move into a structural surplus this year after the market was essentially balanced in 2011.
While world demand increased by 7% last year, growth slowed markedly after the first quarter. The bank looks for demand to grow 6.5% in 2012.
Meanwhile, even though the bank has trimmed its forecast for world finished nickel production in 2012, it still looks for year-on-year growth of 7.5%.
“This year’s surplus may be modest, but only because we think it likely that the nickel price will remain low enough to restrain production growth,” BNP added.
“However, we are not overly negative about nickel’s price prospects from current levels. And more than most metals, nickel has a habit of surprising to the upside. But we retain a negative bias towards nickel relative to other base metals.” For 2012, the bank said that, it favors copper and tin versus nickel.
