Indonesia's early ban on nickel ore exports is confirmed to be fake news, and the country's nickel ore exports should recover within one or two weeks, Kallanish learns from Indonesian officials.

The official nickel ore export ban will take effect from January next year as planned, coordinating minister overseeing maritime and mining, Luhut Pandjaitan said. This means there are still six to seven weeks left for exporters to ship material from ports.

Due to the large number of orders brought forward by news of the export ban in September, port shipments in Indonesia this month reached three times the average of earlier in the year. This triggered a rigorous government review to ensure that there is no illegal export. This also triggered talk of the ban being brought forward, but the embargo currently in place is only for material with no export quota.

Pandjaitan added that domestic nickel smelters have agreed to purchase ore from miners at ''… international prices'' during export suspensions. However, miners complained that local smelters are unreasonably compressing nickel ore prices. The government thus is thinking about launching its own benchmark price (see Kallanish passim). This is intended to cover domestic deals from next year but no process has yet been published.