Norilsk Nickel hopes that trade wars will not affect the company's export volumes, but in the future they may affect metal prices due to the duties being introduced.
"I hope that export volumes will not change. We are trying to sell everything we produce," said Anton Berlin, vice president and head of the sales division of the company, as quoted by TASS.
"If you look at how tariffs are currently structured in the US, if we talk about nickel, then, in fact, only Canada can import it for free. Canadian supplies are not enough, they cover a small part of American demand," he continues.
Due to the moratorium imposed on US import duties, prices of metals produced by Nornickel have hardly changed, but in the future this factor may resurface.
"We don't know yet how this will work. The moratorium [deadline] is approaching, [we are wondering] how will these duties be introduced," he explained, adding that some consumers accumulated product stocks during the moratorium, but industrial enterprises try not to create stocks due to possible price changes, large initial investment and the cost of financing their stocks.
Meanwhile, according to Berlin, the volume of Nornickel’s deliveries to the United States is relatively low, and the main export market for the company was Europe. The volume of deliveries largely depends on the state of the world market, and the next most important factor is the construction of the most efficient logistics chains.
"We did not deliver very much [to the United States], but they are also geographically far from us. But these are communicating vessels: there is global demand, there is global production. And then we are all essentially looking for the most efficient ways [to export]," he concluded.
Theodor Lisovoy, Managing Editor, Rough&Polished
