Nickel Is Mostly Stainless Steel, Not Batteries, and That's the Risk
Stainless steel consumes 70 percent of world nickel demand, batteries just 8 percent, a mismatch with the Indonesian supply buildout aimed at batteries.
Nickel’s demand profile is the most misunderstood of the four materials in this series, because the supply chain narrative around nickel is dominated by battery demand while the actual consumption data tells a different story.
Stainless steel
Austenite stabiliser in 304, 316, and other widely used grades. Covered in depth on the materials science page.
Alloys & foundry
Nickel superalloys for jet engines and gas turbines, covered on the mechanics page, plus other specialty casting alloys.
Batteries
Class 1 battery-grade nickel sulphate for NMC and NCA cathodes, the fastest-growing but still smallest major category.
Plating
Corrosion- and wear-resistant coatings on other metals, an older industrial use.
Other
Catalysts, specialty chemicals, and a long tail of smaller industrial uses.
The actual breakdown
Stainless steel consumes roughly 70 percent of global nickel demand, by far the largest single use, followed by alloys and foundry applications at roughly 12 percent, batteries at only about 8 percent, plating at roughly 6 percent, and other uses making up the remainder. Batteries, the application most associated with nickel in current investment and policy discussion, are still a minority use by a wide margin.
Why the battery narrative outpaces the demand data
The supply chain investment story covered on this material’s supply chain and financing pages, Indonesia’s HPAL buildout and the associated Chinese capital, is specifically aimed at producing battery-grade Class 1 nickel and nickel sulphate, a different product stream from the Class 2 ferronickel and nickel pig iron that feeds stainless steel production covered on this material’s mining page. This means a large share of current nickel investment is chasing a demand category that is still small in absolute terms today, a genuine bet on EV battery demand growth outpacing stainless steel’s much larger existing base, rather than a response to current consumption patterns.
Two nickel products, two demand trajectories
Class 1 (battery-grade) and Class 2 (stainless-grade) nickel effectively behave as related but distinct markets: stainless steel demand grows with global industrial and construction activity, a comparatively stable, mature trajectory, while battery-grade nickel demand growth is tied to EV adoption rates and to the specific cathode chemistries, NMC and NCA, that use nickel rather than the LFP chemistries that do not, covered on this material’s materials science page.
Sources: end-use shares reference this project’s own verified demand data (International Nickel Study Group, USGS Mineral Commodity Summaries 2025).