The pinnacle of Trafigura, one of many world’s largest commodities merchants, has warned that the London Steel Trade’s world nickel benchmark is unfit for goal and wishes reform to mirror the speedy rise of the battery market.

The warning comes simply days after the LME mentioned it found baggage of stones as an alternative of nickel in one in all its warehouses, dealing an additional blow to a contract that’s already affected by low liquidity ranges.

The LME contract is for high-purity nickel, which is chemically very totally different from the nickel sulphate used for many battery purposes. The latter has skilled a surge in demand as electrical autos have grown in recognition.

Jeremy Weir, chief government of the Singapore-based dealer, instructed the FT Commodities International Summit in Lausanne the LME contract was “not match for goal for the worldwide nickel trade after we embody the battery market”.

“The battery market is now the biggest a part of the trade, subsequently the LME contract doesn’t essentially mirror the underlying [structure] of a big a part of the trade,” he mentioned. “We have now to have the contract or contracts to mirror the underlying enterprise and we’ve simply seen a serious change.”

His feedback be a part of a rising refrain from buying and selling homes and miners, together with BHP, calling for an overhaul of the LME nickel benchmark.

The market has been additional difficult in recent times by Chinese language nickel producers in Indonesia which have made technological breakthroughs, inflicting a proliferation of various types of the steel that can’t be delivered in opposition to the LME contract.

The LME, which this month intends to publish an motion plan detailing its proposals to enhance the nickel contract, mentioned in a press release that it recognised the structural shifts out there.

“Our present focus is on rebuilding liquidity in our class 1 [high-purity] nickel contract and we proceed to discover methods by which we would improve the contract specs,” it mentioned.

The luggage of stones that have been found in its warehouse brought about the LME to cancel 9 nickel warrants, price about $1.3mn in whole.

In a separate growth, Trafigura filed a lawsuit final month in London alleging it was the sufferer of a $577mn nickel fraud perpetrated by Indian businessman Prateek Gupta — one of many greatest metals scandals in years.

Trafigura mentioned it bought containers of purported nickel which have been subsequently discovered to not include any nickel. As an alternative a number of of the containers held carbon metal.

Responding to questions on what occurred, Weir mentioned Trafigura had carried out a radical assessment of its inner operations, and concluded that nobody inside the corporate was complicit within the alleged fraud.

“It was a really detailed audit throughout many sides of the organisation,” he mentioned. “Have been individuals concerned internally? No.”

“We’re beginning to make these modifications and we’ll proceed to make some modifications,” he mentioned, with out elaborating

Generally known as the satan’s steel, nickel is the most costly industrial steel, making it a pure selection for fraudsters.

Trafigura introduced a $577mn writedown related to the potential losses from the case.

A spokesperson for Gupta mentioned: “We’re making ready a sturdy response to the allegations from Trafigura and intend to share that quickly.”

The defence is because of be submitted to the court docket by April 6.