The influence of nickel on the performance and cost of stainless steel
As an important component of stainless steel, nickel has a huge impact on the performance and cost of stainless steel, and the market price of stainless steel is also following it. Taking 304 stainless steel as an example, its nickel content is usually around 8%. Corresponding to the cost of stainless steel, the cost of nickel accounts for about 55%. Therefore, even if the stainless steel uses nickel as the weather vane, its fluctuation range It should be positively correlated rather than fluctuating in the same proportion.
In the process of nickel and stainless steel price fluctuations, the situation that achieves the same proportional fluctuation is mostly the case of price declines. In this process, stainless steel is obviously affected by the weak market. Although this is attributed to the dual effect of market and demand, The same proportion of volatility is beyond reasonable.
From the perspective of overall supply and demand, the nickel market has been in a continuous oversupply since 2012. Does the price of stainless steel depend on nickel? With a proportion of more than half of the world’s stainless steel production, China is firmly in the top spot among the world’s major stainless steel producers. However, such a major producer of stainless steel has no right to speak of the price of stainless steel pipes. It is the consensus of the industry that China’s stainless steel industry is large but not strong. Low price, and the price itself is led by nickel.
The logical relationship between nickel and stainless steel is: the demand for stainless steel leads the price of nickel, and the cost and supply of nickel affect the price of stainless steel. Although the relationship between the two is inevitably “a chicken or an egg”, the actual logical relationship has evolved into “nickel price dominates the demand for stainless steel”, and the demand for stainless steel welded pipe has always been recognized as receiving orders from downstream It depends on the situation, but if downstream manufacturers produce products with lower stainless steel procurement costs, what will happen to their orders? In fact, the sales situation of stainless steel in the real process has been able to explain the problem. Every year there is an oversupply of stainless steel, but no stainless steel factory has been closed due to unsalable products. At the same time, the production capacity and output are still rising. This also fully explains ” There is no business that cannot be negotiated, there are only prices that cannot be negotiated.” Therefore, the demand for stainless steel is relatively large. Stainless steel mills and steel traders often sacrifice not only profits but also losses in order to obtain increased demand. The demand for stainless steel has been “kidnapped” by nickel prices. Uncontrollable nickel price risks make stainless steel plants Each phase of production and every receipt of steel trader has become an unknown gambling game.
Since the demand for nickel from stainless steel is diversified, any one of them, such as nickel plate, nickel pig iron, and ferronickel, is biased as the basis for measuring the cost of stainless steel. Unless there is a clearer premium and discount mechanism, it is obvious that the current Such a mechanism is missing or irregular.
From the performance point of view, whether it is in terms of tensile strength, elongation, hardness and other indicators, ultra-pure ferrite is obviously inferior to 304 steel, although it is stronger than 304 steel in terms of chloride corrosion resistance and thermal expansion coefficient, but after all In the process of selecting materials for downstream production, the selection of ferrite and austenite pays more attention to machinability and adapting to various corrosion-resistant environments. Currently, ultra-pure ferrite is only reflected in the fields of automobile exhaust pipes, home appliances, elevators, etc. Because of its better price/performance ratio, its performance in the comprehensive application field is still poor.