Metals: The Big Nickel Shortage

Nickel, the lowly metal commonly associated with the U.S. 50 piece, has become a philosopher’s stone for speculators. On the London Metal Exchange, the main international market, a pound of nickel last week brought $7.70 —about five times more than a year ago. The price was bid to incredible levels by the worst global shortage since World War II.

The immediate cause of the scarcity was a four-month strike at International Nickel Co., which mines well over half of the West’s nickel, mostly from the ore fields at Sudbury, Ont. Last week union negotiators and Inco reached a tentative but shaky agreement that would increase the average hourly pay of workers from $3.10 to $3.98 over three years. If finally accepted, the Inco deal would also be the basis for ending a parallel work stoppage at Falcon-bridge Nickel Mines, a smaller Ontario firm. Even after work is resumed, however, the delivery pipeline will not be refilled for at least five months, and the scarcity will continue.

Appeal to Moscow. A vital element in advanced technology, nickel provides the strength and heat resistance needed for alloys used in jet engines and nuclear reactors. The noncorroding quality that it gives to stainless steel also makes nickel indispensable in spacecraft and SST airliners. The non-Communist world uses 830 million pounds of nickel yearly, and the total has been growing by 10% a year.

Britain, which depends almost wholly on Canadian nickel, has been hurt worst. The country faces what the London Times calls “one of the gravest raw materials crises since wartime controls.” Stainless-steel prices have climbed 35% since August. Rolls-Royce is reclaiming the metal from scrapped engines, and some auto manufacturers will probably cut down on nickel-bearing chromium trim. Lord Melchett, head of the British Steel Corp., has appealed to the Soviets, who also produce nickel, to sell more of it.

In the U.S., the Government has drawn on its stockpile and has begun allocating 9,000,000 lbs. of nickel for defense use. The U.S. may be forced to look for a shiny substitute for the metal that goes into dimes and quarters and makes up 25% of the content of nickels. Thefts of nickel from private warehouses have become common. Manufacturers in civilian markets are in a constant scramble for nickel, some of them patronizing a black market and paying as much as $9 a pound. Small businessmen have taken the hardest beating; they did not have the capital to lay in large supplies before the strike. Eventually, consumers will have to pay more for carving knives, stainless-steel golf clubs, snowmobiles, faucet handles and other nickel-bearing products.

The Search Goes On. Even before the Canadian strike, supplies of nickel were short. Inco, whose executives concede that production has not kept up with demand, is now spending about $150 million annually to increase its Canadian output from last year’s 450 million pounds to 600 million in 1972. This capital outlay is larger than the $144 million that Inco earned after taxes on its sales of $767 million last year.

Canada will continue to be the world’s main supplier for the next few years, but enough new sources will be opened up by the mid-1970s to reduce the leverage of the Ontario unionists, who have a habit of striking at the expiration of each three-year contract. Inco has acquired concessions in Guatemala and Indonesia. The French firm of Le Nickel is mining in New Caledonia. Most important, recent discoveries show that Western Australia may some day rival Ontario as a “nickel province.” For the moment, however, anyone who has a source of nickel can make a mint.