The lack of nickel in the Japanese market has become an unexpected «surprise» for its customers.

Just two years ago in a country often cited such expressions as «a panic because of the rare metals» or «metallic crisis», but these problems instantly forgotten the fall of 2008 after the global crisis. Before the Japanese economy faced new challenges, but concerns about the lack of supply of rare metals subsided with the fall in demand. They accumulated in warehouses, which resulted in a significant reduction in price of many metals, which in 2008 was hard to imagine.

But Japan's main problem remains acute dependence on imports. And then suddenly something unexpected happened supply crisis, but some of the rare metal, a nickel! Nearly a half million market metal, which can not be attributed to the rare, was considered fairly stable, as supply of nickel in Japan. However, due to prolonged strikes in Canada reduced its imports, and in the Land of the Rising Sun began to be felt a lack of metal.

In Japan, 70−80% nickel is consumed by the producers of special steel and stainless steel, so that the industry can not help but feel the lack of raw materials on the market. Spot prices soared instantly, three times the contract.

Therefore, nickel in Japan has become a valuable rare. As reported by the Japanese portal Commodity Eye, earlier fears of Japanese have been associated with almost 100% dependence of the market on the supply of rare earth, tungsten and other rare metals from China, no one thought that there may come a time when an acute shortage of nickel is formed on the market only due to stop of foreign-made!

To avoid such problems in the future, Japanese consumers need to ensure the reliability of their suppliers and have in stock spare ways of obtaining raw materials for their own needs, and otherwise supply problems can be formed not only with nickel, but also with any other imported raw materials.

Anastasia radish, SOGRA