What is actually moving
Indonesia forbade the export of unprocessed nickel ore, forcing anyone who wanted the metal to build a plant on Indonesian soil. Within a decade the country went from an ore supplier to the dominant producer of processed nickel, and the upper limonite layer that used to be waste became battery feedstock.
- The material
- Nickel
- The variety
- Limonite laterite, roughly 1.3% nickel, with recoverable cobalt
- Where it starts
- Indonesia — Sulawesi and Halmahera
Step by step, and border by border
Indonesia · Sulawesi held by Indonesian miners and joint ventures (Miner)
Skimming the top of the profile
The limonite layer sits above the saprolite. It used to be stripped off and dumped to reach the higher-grade ore below; now it is the product.
Why here: Same weathering process as New Caledonia, different layer of the same profile.
Indonesia · HPAL plant, Morowali or Obi held by Plant operators (Chemical)
Dissolving it under pressure
Slurried ore goes into an autoclave with sulfuric acid at about 250 °C and 40 bar. Nickel and cobalt dissolve; iron stays behind as a residue.
What happened to the rest: The acid is made on site from sulfur, most of it imported. A nickel plant is quietly also a very large chemical plant.
Why here: Because the ore export ban means it has to be. This industry exists in Indonesia by policy as much as by geology.
Indonesia · Same complex held by Plant operators (Chemical)
Precipitating a shippable intermediate
Nickel and cobalt are precipitated together as mixed hydroxide precipitate — MHP — a green-grey filter cake that is compact enough to ship economically.
Why here: MHP exists purely to solve a freight problem: you cannot ship a tank of pregnant leach solution across an ocean.
China · Chinese refineries held by Refiners (Refiner)
To a refinery
MHP is containerised and shipped to be redissolved and separated into individual metal salts.
Why here: Sulfate refining and cathode precursor manufacture are co-located; the intermediate goes to where both already exist.
China · Precursor and cathode plants held by Chemical and cathode makers (Manufacturer)
Sulfate, precursor, cathode
Redissolved and crystallised into nickel sulfate and cobalt sulfate, co-precipitated with manganese into a mixed hydroxide precursor, then lithiated and calcined into cathode powder.
Why here: Precursor chemistry is the least visible and most concentrated step in the entire battery chain.
China · Cell and vehicle plants held by Battery and vehicle manufacturers (Manufacturer)
Roughly 220 electric cars
At around 50 kg of nickel per high-nickel pack, 11 tonnes of contained nickel is on the order of two hundred cars.
Why here: From a hillside in Sulawesi to a car park, in about five months.
This is a worked example. It follows a stated starting quantity through published typical yields and recoveries, so the proportions are checkable; it is not a record of a specific shipment. Route facts — which countries, which processes, and why the material cannot simply be handled somewhere else — are compiled from public reporting.