The latest forecasts from Fastmarkets' team of analysts are ready to view.In the iron ore market, supply issues including heavy rains at the start of the year, followed by staffing problems during the Covid-19 pandemic, have affected exports from Brazil. This has helped Australia gain a larger market share, but since June, Brazilian export volumes have returned to levels last seen before the...Read More
Eight of the nine Category 1 members of the London Metal Exchange have indicated their support for continuing to trade official lunchtime prices in the open-outcry ring.Does this mean that one company does not support ring trading? And could one of the exchange's members be preparing to leave the trading floor?The exchange revealed on Monday August 9 that it had majority support for the ring, in a...Read More
London Metal Exchange ring dealing members have a decision to make - whether to remain one or not.The LME has just announced it will reopen the open outcry trading floor, which was temporarily closed due to Covid-19, on September 6.Its plan, however, comes with a twist; some ring dealers say, a knife.The official prices - which the global trade and industry use as the global reference for physical...Read More
Switzerland-based metals trader MRI Trading has hired Anant Mishra to head its office in South Africa, Fastmarkets heard on Friday September 3.Mishra will join MRI later this month from Vedanta Resources, where he has worked since 2004,...Read More
Fastmarkets copper concentrate processing charges continued to rise in the week to Friday September 3.Copper smelters were buying a few spot parcels of concentrates, Fastmarkets heard, with transactions for October cargoes heard at $60s per tonne for standard clean concentrates.Miners have put more tonnages onto the spot market for sale. Some Escondida and Toromocho parcels were...Read More
Premium hard coking coal fob prices jumped on the latest trade on Friday September 3, indicating a promising outlook for the fob market. And the low-volatility pulverized coal injection (PCI) price in the cfr market soared due to tight supply from Russia, sources said.Fastmarkets indicesPremium hard coking coal, cfr Jingtang: $441.97 per tonne, down by $1.05 per tonneHard coking coal, cfr Jingtang...Read More
The latest forecasts from Fastmarkets' team of analysts is ready to view.Stainless steel prices and margins for stainless steel producers have risen notably over the past few months in both Europe and the United States, but there are now signs that the rally is petering out.A clear reason for the halt to rising prices comes from the near 20% drop in nickel prices seen in late February/early March,...Read More
Three-month aluminium futures on the London Metal Exchange closed at their highest level for a decade on Friday September 3, with the base-metals complex broadly making gains despite jobs data from the United States coming in dramatically lower than expected.The LME aluminium contract closed at $2,727 per tonne on Friday, up by 1.1% from Thursday's close and its highest since May 3, 2011. This cam...Read More
The latest forecasts from Fastmarkets' team of analysts are ready to view.This month's key ferro-alloy forecast highlights:Bulk and noble alloys both moved largely in line with our price forecasts globally over the past month, though several markets surprised to the upside, exceeding our forecast gains. Stronger-than-forecast pricing momentum was primarily triggered by supply shortages in numerous...Read More
The latest forecasts from Fastmarkets' team of analysts are ready to view.Bulk ferro-alloy prices have shown impressive gains again this month, with ferro-silicon, silicon metal and manganese alloy prices all making significant increases. Noble alloy markets also enjoyed upward momentum, with both vanadium and molybdenum prices rising sharply.Recovering demand from steelmakers globally, together w...Read More
The latest forecasts from Fastmarkets' team of analysts are ready to view.This month's key ferro-alloy forecast highlights:?EUR? Impressive advances in ore and alloy prices persisted in March, with most markets posting significant price gains. Strengthening demand from steelmakers along with supply shortages and depleted inventories in numerous markets, as well as freight and transportation...Read More
Inner Mongolia, China's ferro-chrome production heartland, has imposed restrictions on its metallurgical sector in a move that has fueled the high-carbon ferro-chrome markets in China and Europe, and although this may ease off, the gains were unlikely to be lost while alloy ramp-ups continue, sources have told Fastmarkets.The decision to restrict energy consumption in Inner Mongolia since December...Read More
The latest forecasts and analysis of the ferrous scrap and iron metallics market from the Fastmarkets research team are ready to be viewed.Stifled automotive output this year, driven by a supply shortage of semiconductor chips used in vehicles, has tightened prime scrap availability and widened the spreads between this grade of steelmaking raw material and obsolete scrap.While wide prime-over-obso...Read More
The latest forecasts from Fastmarkets' team of analysts are ready to view.Fastmarkets analysts were invited to present our outlook for the coking coal market at Coaltrans Asia, held online on November 23-25. One of the key topics at the event was the trade tensions between China and Australia, which overtook Mongolia to become the largest coking coal exporter to China this year...Read More
The latest forecasts from Fastmarkets' team of analysts are ready to view.Iron ore remains the most bullish commodity of the year, with prices fuelled by Chinese demand and supply disruptions in Brazil, along with bullish sentiment. But prices are expected to come down because Brazilian exports have begun to recover, and have reached their highest level since the Brumadinho dam disaster in 2019. W...Read More
Three-month aluminium futures on the London Metal Exchange closed at their highest level for a decade on Friday September 3, with the base-metals complex broadly making gains despite jobs data from the United States coming in dramatically lower than expected.The LME aluminium contract closed at $2,727 per tonne on Friday, up by 1.1% from Thursday's close and its highest since May 3, 2011. This cam...Read More
Chilean copper production in July was close to stability when compared with the corresponding month of 2020, amid increased output from Codelco and a drop reported by Escondida and Collahuasi, the country's copper commission, Cochilco, said on Thursday September 2.Chile produced 465,000 tonnes of copper in July, a slight decrease of 0.02% from 465,100 tonnes a year before but down by 2.58% from 47...Read More
The market for pig iron imports in the United States went down during the week to Friday September 3 on active bookings at lower prices.Fastmarkets' price assessment for pig iron, import, cfr Gulf of Mexico, US, was $530-535 per tonne on Friday, down from $545-550 per tonne cfr a week before.Russia-origin pig iron was booked at $530-535...Read More
An overview of the new energy materials markets and their price moves in the week to Friday September 3.Susan Zou, Yingchi Yang and...Read More
An overview of the new energy materials markets and their price moves in the week to Friday September 3.Susan Zou, Yingchi Yang and...Read More