WW II Question with WI implications: how important was Petsamo nickel to the Axis?

Not long before WW II, a major deposit of nickel was discovered at Petsamo in far northern Finland.

The area was overrun by Soviet troops during the Winter War, but was returned to Finland in the 1940 treaty. (This may have been due to British pressure, as a Canadian company was engaged in developing the nickel mines.)

When the Continuation War began, German troops from Norway occupied the area, securing the mines against Soviet attack.

Thus the nickel production of these mines was available to the Axis.

I have attempted some research, but not found any answers to the following questions:

1) What was the nickel consumption of Axis industry (especially Germany) during the war?

2) How much of this nickel was obtained from the Petsamo mines?

(The WI implications are obvious: Allied control of Petsamo would deny this nickel supply to the Axis. If the Petsamo nickel represented a large proportion of Axis nickel supplies, that could have a major impact on Axis war production.)
 
I'll quote myself from an earlier thread:

...in 1941 and early 1942, Germany received very little nickel from Petsamo. The crucial point was late 1942 and 1943. In 1943, the Kolosjoki mine already covered 73% of all German demand for nickel. The mine area was heavily protected with fortifications, troops, AA batteries, etc, being probably the most well-protected German fortified area nobody has ever heard of.

Thus, we can say that practically, the Petsamo nickel IOTL played no significant role for German war production prior to the summer of 1942. But politically, and in terms of planning, the German leadership was aware of the potential high value of the area already from before the war, and made first practical advances towards the Finns to gain access to the Petsamo nickel already well before the Winter War in 1939.

I'll look into my sources about actual numbers (tons of ore and such), might have some more information later today.

EDIT: There is an estimate that the Petsamo (Kolosjoki) nickel mine provided Germany with 13 000 tons of pure nickel in between 1940 and 1944. Like I wrote above, in 1943 this source amounted for 73% of nickel used by the Third Reich. By the fall of 1944, this number was 87%. The same source says that altogether during 40-44, Germany used 50 000 tons of nickel. Thus the amount of nickel received from Finland accounted roughly for one year's entire German demand.

In other words, if Germany is not getting nickel from Finland, it would have big problems in sourcing the same amount of the metal from anywhere else. The Germans could get more nickel from Norway and Greece, and there were plans for expanding the Frankenstein nickel mine in Silesia. But this would have been expensive, and would not have been enough to offset the loss of the Petsamo nickel in terms of total production. The lack of nickel would have been felt sorely by mid-1943, and in comparison to the OTL it would have meant cutting down such war production that required the metal.
 
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