NEW YORK (Commodity Online): Norilsk Nickel is expecting investor positions to be the main driver of price movements this year, rather than industrial demand. Norilsk Nickel is the world's largest producer of nickel and palladium.
The nickel market is balanced this year, and price movements will largely depend upon fluctuations in investors’ positions, rather than changes in industrial demand, Norilsk's head of marketing Anton Berlin is reported by Bloomberg as saying.
Investors are becoming increasingly interested in nickel as the Chinese steel output is expected to grow to almost 700 million tonnes in 2012 and thus give a boost to nickel demand. The current weak price of nickel also means that it can now compete with its substitute NPI (Nickel Pig Iron). Many manufacturers have expressed interest in moving back to nickel while some have already done so.
In a report released in January this year, Daniel Brebner, an analyst with the Deutsche Bank A G, says that he expects Nickel to outperform gold in 2012.
