Review major events, news and trends in the global nickel mining and processing industry since September 2025 — markets, supply and demand, projects, processing at current assets, company news and M&A, consumption and trade — with a timeline of major events and the economic, political or natural shocks that affected operations.
This review covers 120 deduplicated, significance-ranked events from 1 September 2025 through the 12 October 2026 research cutoff, drawn from 46 independent source hosts (the largest backs 17.5% of rows). Events in the set run through early July 2026 and are sparse after June, so August–October 2026 is not fully covered; monthly counts reflect publication and extraction patterns as well as genuine event density, not production statistics.
The window opens in deep structural surplus. In October 2025 the INSG forecast a 209,000 t surplus for 2025 widening to 261,000 t in 2026; Sumitomo Metal Mining saw ~256,000 t for 2026; by December 2025 Nornickel had doubled its estimates to 240,000 t (2025) and 275,000 t (2026), with LME inventories at four-year highs. These forecasts conflict and are left unreconciled — all point the same direction: a fourth consecutive surplus year driven by Indonesian NPI growth. The regime then shifts: Indonesia's December 2025 output-cut signal and the 2026 RKAB squeeze, Russian sanctions-compliance disruptions reportedly removing ~180,000 t of supply in H1 2026, and the sulphur crisis turned a glut narrative into policy-constrained volatility, with inventory buffers reported compressed to 2.1 weeks of consumption by mid-2026 (secondary commentary; treat as a reported claim).
Per the USGS 2026 summaries, Indonesia produced about 2.6 Mt of the world's 3.9 Mt of mined nickel in 2025 — roughly two-thirds — with Chinese firms controlling about 75% of Indonesian refining capacity. Stainless steel remained the demand anchor; battery-related consumption was forecast by SMM at only ~470,000 t in 2026, up a modest 10,000 t year on year, as LFP substitution and uneven EV momentum limited nickel intensity even as some mid-2026 commentary argued an EV-led demand inflection was underway.
New supply still advanced where economics or strategy supported it: PT Vale Indonesia broke ground at Pomalaa in October 2025 feeding an HPAL plant slated for Q4 2026; Lifezone Metals bought BHP's stake in Kabanga (Tanzania); Vale Base Metals added reserves at Voisey's Bay; and G7 governments named nickel one of two pilot minerals for an allied traceability and investment framework, accelerating strategically supported non-Indonesian projects even as low prices starved conventional ones.
Processing risk moved to center stage. HPAL and NPI output depended less on installed capacity than on ore quota allocations, sulphur and reagent access, power, and tailings safety. Quota cuts reached even domestic smelters' feed; the sulphur squeeze cut output ~10%; the IMIP tailings failure and a March 2026 landslide that buried four workers halted operations; Tsingshan meanwhile pushed into Class-1 supply, registering its 50,000 t/y, 99.96%-purity PTENICO cathode on the LME and SHFE.
Consolidation and retreat marked the high-cost end: Eramet ceased additional funding to SLN in New Caledonia, signalling restructuring of uneconomic sites; Norway's sovereign wealth fund excluded Eramet over Indonesian nickel concerns; IGO wound down Nova and divested for a reported A$7 million — a marker of collapsed valuations for mature high-cost sulfide assets; Lifezone consolidated Kabanga. Low prices accelerated bifurcation between low-cost Indonesian integrated supply and policy-backed Western projects.
Policy was the period's dominant force: 41 of 120 events are regulation, policy, trade, politics or sanctions. Indonesia's RKAB system, royalties and domestic-processing rules became the marginal determinant of global ore availability; an Indonesia–Philippines nickel corridor advanced; Russian supply was disrupted by sanctions compliance; the G7 built allied critical-minerals frameworks; and Middle East conflict spilled into nickel through the Hormuz sulphur route. New Caledonian political strain compounded Eramet's retreat.
Eight events are landslides, floods, weather, disaster or environment: the 18 February 2026 IMIP tailings liquefaction failure (one worker killed, operations halted), the 22 March 2026 landslide burying four workers at an IMIP tailings facility, flooding of 247 ha of rice fields by HPAL construction at Pomalaa that triggered farmer ultimatums, and sustained environmental-compliance pressure at IMIP and Raja Ampat (Gag Island resumed under heightened monitoring as the sole surviving permit of five).
Watch: the pace and credibility of Indonesian RKAB enforcement versus smelter ore hunger; sulphur and reagent logistics through Hormuz; whether reported inventory drawdowns persist; the Q4 2026 Pomalaa HPAL start; further Western shutdowns or state-backed restarts; and tailings-safety regulation after IMIP. Forecasters disagree on when surplus ends — estimates in the rows range from persistent surplus through 2027 to policy-driven deficit talk by mid-2026 — and this review deliberately leaves that unreconciled.
| Date | Theme | Where / who | Event | Source |
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Method: 120 deduplicated nickel-industry events, 1 Sep 2025 – 12 Oct 2026 research window (events present through 1 Jul 2026; Aug–Oct 2026 sparsely covered), from 46 independent hosts via broad web research and semantic extraction; events deduplicated by normalized asset, date and category and ranked by systemic significance (0.68–0.84 here). Dates may be month-level or publication dates. Sources mix primary company/government material with specialist and secondary market commentary; conflicting forecasts are reported, not reconciled. Table trims impact text for space; each row links its source.