For a century nickel meant one thing: it makes steel stainless. Now it is also the heart of the highest-energy EV batteries. In barely a decade one country, Indonesia, went from a bit player to 61% of world supply, flooded the market, and crashed the price. Who mines it, who refines it, and where it goes. 2024 (USGS / INSG) · Compiled June 2026
World mine output 2024
3.6 Mt
the #4 metal, after copper
Indonesia's share
61%
more than the rest of the world combined
Stainless steel demand
~70%
nickel's century-old job
LME price 2024
▼ 40%
a four-year low on oversupply
Where the World's Nickel Is Mined (2024)
Colour intensity shows each country's share of global mine production. Hover a country for its tonnage. One island nation now dominates the map like no other metal.
Lower shareHigher share
2024 Mine Production by Country (kt)
Indonesia alone makes more than ten times the next producer. The Philippines, Russia and a long tail of others split what's left.
World Production Surged on Indonesian Supply (kt)
Output jumped more than 40% in five years, almost all of it from one country deciding to dominate the market.
3.6 million tonnes a year, made tangible.
Most of it you never see, because it is alloyed inside steel. Verify-and-cite figures in the footer.
115 kg
every second
The world mines about 115 kg of nickel every second.
90 mn
EV batteries / year
At ~40 kg of nickel per high-nickel EV battery.
70%
becomes stainless
The sink, the cutlery, the kitchen: that is where most nickel lives.
61%
from one country
Indonesia mines more nickel than everyone else on Earth put together.
Nickel vs Every Other Metal (annual world production, Mt)
Nickel sits in the middle of the pack: far below copper, far above the battery specialists lithium and the rare earths. It is the bridge metal between the old stainless economy and the new battery one.
There Are Really Two Nickels
Class 2 is cheap and impure, made into nickel pig iron for stainless steel. Class 1 is high-purity metal, the only kind batteries can use. They are nearly an even split of supply, but only one can go into an EV.
Where Nickel Goes
Stainless steel still rules, but the battery slice is the one growing fast, and it needs the scarcer, purer Class 1 metal.
Why the Split Matters
Nickel has a quiet identity crisis. For a hundred years it has been a stainless steel metal: add about 8% nickel to steel and it stops rusting, which is why your sink, cutlery and kitchen appliances are made of it. That market still takes around 70% of supply and mostly uses cheap, lower-purity Class 2 nickel. But the future demand is in batteries, where high-nickel cathodes give EVs their range, and those need high-purity Class 1 metal that is harder and dirtier to make. Indonesia's boom produced an ocean of Class 2 for stainless. Turning that into battery-grade Class 1, cleanly, is the puzzle the industry is still solving.
Indonesia 2015
~8%
a minor producer
Indonesia 2024
61%
in under a decade
Chinese firms in Indonesia
~72%
of its refining capacity
Result for the price
▼ 40%
oversupply crashed it
How Indonesia Took Over (share of world supply)
In 2014 Indonesia banned raw nickel-ore exports, forcing miners to build smelters at home. Chinese money and technology poured in, and the share chart did this.
The Price It Crashed (LME nickel, USD per tonne)
All that new supply turned a tight market into a glut. Nickel fell about 40% to a four-year low, hurting miners everywhere from Australia to New Caledonia.
The Supply-Chain Story
Indonesia's rise is the clearest case of resource nationalism actually working, and of who really captured the gains. By banning raw-ore exports, Jakarta forced the processing to happen onshore instead of shipping value abroad. It worked: the country went from bit player to 61% of world mine supply in a decade. But the smelters were built largely with Chinese capital and technology, and Chinese firms led by Tsingshan now control roughly 72% of Indonesia's refining capacity. So the same pattern repeats from the rare-earths and lithium stories: the ore is Indonesian, but the supply chain still runs through China. The flood of cheap Indonesian nickel also crashed the global price, which was great for stainless buyers and brutal for higher-cost mines elsewhere.
Why It Matters
Nickel is the bridge between two industrial eras. It built the stainless world we already live in, and it now sets the range of the electric one we are building. The catch is that the cheap nickel flooding out of Indonesia is mostly the wrong kind for batteries, while the high-purity Class 1 metal that EVs need is scarcer and dirtier to produce, often through energy-hungry, waste-heavy processing of low-grade ore. So the headline glut and the four-year-low price hide a looming squeeze on battery-grade supply. Add the concentration risk, one country mining 61% of it and Chinese firms refining most of that, and nickel becomes one more critical mineral where having enough rock is not the same as having a secure supply. The next decade is about turning Indonesia's mountain of stainless-grade nickel into clean, battery-grade metal without wrecking the price or the rainforest it often sits under.