Nickel accounted for just 2.7 per cent of BHP’s revenue in the December half, but about 90 per cent of the questions chief executive Mike Henry took from journalists on Tuesday.
Nevertheless, Henry dutifully worked through the nickel questions, revealing several key points about BHP’s attitude to a business it has now placed under strategic review, and may well shut in the coming months.Second, BHP believes the shift in the nickel sector’s dynamics – where prices have plunged due to an influx of high-grade nickel out of Indonesia – is structural, not cyclical.but this was not BHP’s idea.
But Henry’s broader point is that Australia needs to realise it is in a fight with other countries that are also trying to grab onto the critical minerals boom – and doing so, he says, in a more business-friendly way.