Indonesia's 2026 nickel ore supply-side policy has not yet fully landed, the total quota has shrunk significantly, the progress of RKAB revision and approval is lower than industry expectations, and the contradiction between supply and demand in the nickel market continues to ferment.

Indonesia's Ministry of Energy and Mineral Resources has set the total mining quota for nickel ore RKAB in 2026 at **260-270 million wet metric tons**, which is a sharp year-on-year drop compared to the approved quota of 379 million metric tons in 2025, with a decline of about 28.7%-31.4%. The mining approval system has been adjusted from a three-year system to an annual approval system, and policy uncertainty has increased significantly.

According to the rules, July is the application window for the 2026 RKAB revision, and mining enterprises can submit applications for additional quotas. As of now, the Indonesian Nickel Miners Association APNI said that most of its member enterprises **have not yet received the official approval documents for the revised version of RKAB**.

Officials have made it clear that the national total quota will not be fully increased, and quota additions will only be offered to a small number of supporting smelting mines with real raw material gaps, and small-scale selective approval will be adopted. The widely circulated news of large-scale quota increases has not yet been officially confirmed by ANTARA New...

From the perspective of industrial fundamentals, the annual nickel ore demand of Indonesia's existing smelting capacity at full production is about 315 million metric tons, and there is an obvious gap between the 260-270 million metric tons quota and the smelting demand. In order to hedge against the shortage of raw materials, some smelters have begun to increase imports of nickel ore from the Philippines, and the cost of imported ore is higher than that of local nickel ore, squeezing smelting profits.

Affected by quota constraints, the operating rate of Indonesia's RKEF pyrometallurgical smelting has declined. Superimposed with supporting policies such as nickel ore benchmark price adjustment and foreign exchange control, the cost pressure of the nickel industrial chain has also risen simultaneously.

Core Risk Warning

1. The RKAB revision and approval do not disclose the list of enterprises and the incremental scale, and information asymmetry continues to disturb market expectations.
2. The 30 million metric tons strategic buffer quota proposed by the nickel miners association is only an industry suggestion, and there is no government commitment to implement it.
3. Under the annual RKAB approval mechanism, the annual mining quota will need to be re-negotiated in the future, and supply-side policy risks will exist for a long time.