Posted on 12 Mar 2026
PT Indonesia Tsingshan Stainless Steel (ITSS), the Indonesian production base of China's Tsingshan Holding Group, raised its 304-grade stainless export prices by $50/tonne on March 10. The move follows its late-February hike and brings the total rise since the February 15-23 Chinese New Year holiday to $65/t.
The price adjustment came just one day after a major production disruption at the Indonesia Morowali Industrial Park (IMIP), where four high-pressure acid leaching (HPAL) projects – QMB, Meiming, ESG and Green-Eco – were forced to suspend operations for maintenance as a consequence of a fatal landslide at their shared tailings area in February. The outage is expected to last several weeks, Mysteel Global learned.
The suspension of the HPAL plants has rippled through Indonesia's nickel supply chain. According to Mysteel data, the four idled projects have a combined capacity of 150,000 tonnes/year in nickel content and produced 108,200 tonnes of mixed hydroxide precipitate (MHP) last year.
Market sources suggest that some production lines using rotary kiln-electric furnaces (RKEFs) that were originally set up to produce nickel pig iron (NPI) for stainless steel may now shift to producing high-grade nickel matte.
This would be to fill the supply gap for battery raw materials created by the HPAL shutdowns and would directly reduce NPI availability for stainless production as a result.
The combination of a major production halt and pre-existing supply constraints has fueled market expectations of a jump in NPI prices due to shortages, which in turn are expected to push stainless steel production costs higher and support stainless prices.
Market participants widely see ITSS's latest price hike as a rapid response to anticipated cost increases for the upstream raw material.
As of March 6, ITSS reported a cash cost for high-grade NPI via the RKEF process of $11,557/t in metal content, up $177/t in metal content from February 24, according to Mysteel's assessment.
In China's domestic spot market, Mysteel assessed the price of 304/2B Hongwang 2*1240mm stainless cold-rolled coil in Wuxi city at Yuan 14,450/t ($2,101/t) in-warehouse including 13% VAT on March 10, up Yuan 200/t from February 24. The gain reflects the broader market's sensitivity to upstream cost pressures, Mysteel Global suggests.
Source:Mysteel Global
