(Yicai) Dec. 2 -- The first cargo ship travelling directly from Indonesia’s Labota Port to Wuhan in China's central Hubei province has arrived, shaving as much as 10 days off the normal transport time and opening up a fast channel for the delivery of nickel, a key material used in electric car batteries, to inland China.

An Indonesian cargo vessel loaded with 4,000 tons of Mixed Hydroxide Precipitate, an intermediate product of nickel smelting, arrived in Yangluo Port on Nov. 30.

The load of Mixed Hydroxide Precipitate came from a factory built by Chinese battery materials supplier GEM on Indonesia’s Sulawesi Island, where 80 percent of the island nation’s nickel reserves are concentrated. The plant, which came into operation in 2022, has an output of 150,000 tons of Mixed Hydroxide Precipitate a year.

Before this new route was opened, the nickel produced by GEM’s Indonesian factory had to be transported by land to the company’s plant in Jingmen, Hubei province from ports in faraway Guangzhou in southern Guangdong province or Lianyungang in eastern Jiangsu province. In order to cut transportations times and logistics costs, GEM applied to the Hubei government in May to open a direct route to Indonesia. The Shenzhen-based company was given the greenlight at the end of September.

Indonesia has abundant reserves of nickel, with around 42 percent of global reserves at 55 million tons compared with China’s 2.45 percent. GEM linked arms with Brazilian iron ore giant Vale last month to invest USD1.4 billion to build a new factory on Sulawesi Island to boost Mixed Hydroxide Precipitate output by 66,000 tons a year.

Editors: Dou Shicong, Kim Taylor