Export prices for Chinese stainless steel rose over the past week after Indonesia said it would bring forward a ban on nickel ore exports to the end of this year.
Indonesia's plan to expedite the ban, which was initially scheduled for 2022, will only be finalized once re-elected president Joko Widodo is sworn into office for a second term in October.The price of nickel on the London Metal Exchange surged to its highest since September 2014 after the plan was announced, which prompted stainless steel producers to raise their asking prices, market sources said.Market sources said that while they expected stainless steel prices to be influenced by the ban in the near term, they had differing opinions about the long-term outlook."I feel that the surge in the LME nickel price is the work of market speculators and the ban will not have a long-term impact on stainless steel prices because downstream demand remains weak," a trader in eastern China said.A trader...