LONDON (Reuters) - The stainless steel industry is trying to cut nickel usage in its production process, as the volatility and high price of the metal hurts, a senior industry figure told Reuters on Monday.
"The steel industry has a very clear strategy reducing its dependence on nickel," Ian Christmas, secretary-general of the International Institute of Iron and Steel (IISI), said at the Reuters Global Mining Summit in London.
"Stainless steel producers are pushing very hard to replace austenitic steel with ferrotic steel which has a very small amount of nickel" and is mainly chromium based, he said.
Nickel accounts for more than 60 percent of the cost of making austenitic steel, also known as 300 series of stainless steel, the most widely used and manufactured high grade metal.
The price of nickel rose to a record high of $51,800 per tonne last year, but lost around 50 percent of its value in the following three months.
Currently the three-months nickel price on the London Metal Exchange MNI3 trades around $33,000 per tonne after the high and volatile price triggered production cutbacks from the stainless industry.
"The price of nickel has pushed a lot of innovation not only in stainless steel business but also among its customers," Christmas said.
"There are certain applications where austenitic steel is a fantastic material but increasingly there are many applications where ferrotic material is good," he said.
The rustproof stainless steel, used in products from forks to fighter jets, gets its unique properties by the addition of chrome. Continued...
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