👉 Background: BHP is the ASX-listed mining and metal company founded back in 1885 in Broken Hill. It's grown to over 80,000 employees and until recently was the largest company in Australia by market value - CBA now holds that crown.

👉 What happened: Now, BHP has announced plans to pause or “mothball” its nickel mine in Western Australia for up to 3 years. This will impact the jobs of over 3,000 BHP employees who have been working in this mine.

👉 What else: BHP has already written down the value of its nickel business by $5.4 billion just this year because they can’t compete with the prices and quantity of nickel coming out of competing nations, like Indonesia.

What's the key learning?

💡When it rains nickel, it pours nickel… well right now it is.

💡BHP has faced a perfect storm of challenges in the nickel industry, which have caused the price of nickel to drop from $25,000 USD a tonne in 2022 to $16,000 USD a tonne now:

• Nickel is a key material for electric vehicles but as market demand for EVs has slowed down dramatically.
• At the same time, nickel supply is up rapidly after Indonesia started to produce a heap of it at much cheaper prices.

💡Four other major nickel mines have shut down in Western Australia over the past 12 months as they struggled with the new competition from Indonesian mines. Right now, Australian metal just isn't able to compete in this oversupplied market.