After a decade of growth, Indonesia has become the world's largest producer of processed nickel

We are all surrounded by nickel. It’s one of the key ingredients in stainless steel, so most of us see it every day: from the pots we cook with, to the pipes in bathrooms, the batteries in mobile phones, and alloys in cars.

For nearly four decades, Indonesia — which has the world’s largest reserves — mined nickel but processed very little of it at home. This changed around a decade ago, when the government banned the export of raw nickel, forcing companies to process it domestically.

That’s the focus of the chart, which shows processed nickel production in tonnes among today’s largest producers.

Indonesia’s production increased more than 60-fold, going from around 22,000 tonnes in 2014 to over 1.4 million tonnes in 2023. The country went from producing 1% of the world’s total processed nickel to 41% in that period.

In 2021, Indonesia overtook China to become the world’s largest producer and is now far ahead. But much of that growth involved Chinese capital. The International Energy Agency reports that Chinese companies now own the vast majority of Indonesia’s nickel refining assets.

Where this page came from

This page was imported from Our World in Data. “After a decade of growth, Indonesia has become the world's largest producer of processed nickel” by Esteban Ortiz-Ospina, published by Our World in Data under CC BY 4.0. Changed here: set as a page, its interactive charts shown as pictures. Data from third parties keeps its own licence.

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