It's in your fork, the electric car battery charging in your neighbourhood, and the jet engine flying 35,000 feet overhead. It helps keep bridges standing and surgical tools sterile, can survive scorching temperatures and resists the corrosive fury of seawater. Meet nickel, the versatile, everyday metal working hard behind the scenes of our lives.
Built for extremes
Nickel’s characteristics underline why the metal is so widely used, valuable and strategically important. It’s corrosion resistant, stable in extreme temperatures, catalytic and magnetic, strong yet flexible. A world without nickel would ground aircraft, stall EV production, disrupt hospitals, and bring construction to a halt. Few elements carry that kind of weight.
As Stefan Mueller, Division Manager Base Metal Finishing at Umicore's Metal Deposition Solutions (MDS), puts it: "If nickel was suddenly unavailable, we would have a serious problem."
What’s remarkable about nickel is its versatility: from microchips to steel to decorative coatings, nickel is everywhere.
The hardy metal can do some amazing things, especially when combined with other metals to create a so-called alloy. For example, nickel-titanium alloys used in medical instruments can shape shift. Bend them completely out of shape and they’ll spring back to their original form when reheated. At cryogenic temperatures beyond -150°C, nickel alloys remain tough and ductile. At the other temperature extreme, nickel-based alloys perform reliably in aircraft engines and power generation equipment operating close to 1,000°C. Nickel is seriously tough.
That same resilience shows up in everyday life and milder temperatures too. Around two-thirds of global primary nickel production is used in stainless steel, particularly in austenitic grades that rely on nickel for their corrosion resistance and durability for use in construction, transport, industry and household products. In Europe, scrap stainless steel is routinely recycled without any loss of quality, meaning the nickel in a bridge demolished today could reappear in another form tomorrow.
The backbone of electroplating
Perhaps no application better illustrates nickel's indispensability than electroplating, the process of bonding a thin metal layer onto a surface to enhance its properties. From the coins in your pocket to the connectors inside your laptop, electroplated nickel is working constantly to make products more durable, more functional, and longer lasting.
Stefan Mueller, explains the electroplating principle: "At Umicore's MDS unit, we change the properties of a metal, transforming it into something that performs far beyond its original limitations." In electronics, for example, the process typically starts with a copper alloy base. "We plate nickel on top of it," Stefan explains, "and that nickel layer becomes the platform everything else is built on." In high-performance applications, a final ultra-thin layer of gold is added for optimal conductivity. While not as flashy, nickel provides a solid foundation of stability and protection below the surface.
Recycling for future security of supply
While nickel is everywhere, ensuring it stays readily available is becoming one of Europe’s biggest industrial challenges. Nickel's strategic importance has been recognized as part of the European Critical Raw Materials Act, which lists it as a material deemed essential to the continent's industrial and clean-tech future. Considering how many industries rely on nickel, the EU has a vested interest in ensuring the continent can source it within its own borders. Europe has set ambitious 2030 targets for domestic extraction, processing and recycling of nickel, including 25% recycling on European soil.
Battery recycling is a good example of how Umicore contributes to this. Umicore's pilot battery recycling plant in Hoboken, Belgium uses advanced processes to recover over 95% of nickel from end-of-life batteries and battery scrap, which are turned into new materials.
We supply recycled battery-grade nickel for battery materials. With the EU Battery Regulation setting strict recovery targets, recycling is essential to ensure Europe's secure and sustainable nickel supply chain.
In recent news, the EU’s proposed Industrial Accelerator Act is designed to encourage more battery and EV manufacturing in Europe through ‘Made in Europe’ incentives, reinforcing the need for local recycling and refining capacity.
Umicore’s business model and deep expertise in recycling and refining materials sit at the heart of that challenge. "Nickel sourcing is increasingly complex due to geopolitical and environmental factors," says Michael Baltes, Lead Metallurgist of nickel and cobalt. "In addition to our responsible sourcing practices for nickel, our R&D efforts focus on developing more efficient refining and recycling processes so we can stay ahead and ensure sustainable supply, helping Europe build the resilient materials base it needs."
