Indonesia’s Nickel Hub to Cut Output as El Niño Drought Hits

The significance lies in the intersection of climate and critical-minerals supply: a weather pattern, not policy or geology, is now a binding constraint on the world's dominant nickel source. That matters for stainless and battery supply chains that have grown dependent on Indonesian volume, and it complicates the broader push to diversify away from single-source concentration. Whether the drought's effect proves seasonal or structural, and how downstream buyers respond, is the open question.