A team of Colorado School of Mines students dominated the Materials Bowl at the annual meeting of The Minerals, Metals and Materials Society, held March 11-15 in Phoenix, Arizona.The team comprised undergraduates Melissa Thrun and John Copley and graduate students Joe Jankowski and Chloe Johnson, all in the Department of Metallurgical and Materials Engineering. Karen Chen served as an alternate an...Read More

The benchmark cash/three-month spread in aluminium at the start of this week hit backwardation levels not seen since before the Global Financial Crisis, which is a landmark event but not necessarily a signal of a major shift in market dynamics.It is most probably a short-term aberration caused by the potent combination of February date shorts clashing with dominant longs but given added spice and...Read More

“Put your money where your mouth is!”That’s what my brother said to me when I challenged him to a March Madness basketball contest.Each year, we fill out a bracket for the big basketball tournament that kicks off tonight. And the winner gets bragging rights for the next year.Since I’m not much of a gambler, we’ll stick with our traditional one-dollar bet.But with that...Read More

Apple has been experimenting with ways to recover cobalt from its lithium-ion batteries and to use recycled cobalt. The company says it could potentially recover 550 kilograms of cobalt from every 100,000 iPhone 6 devices it recycles. Now there are reports it's looking to secure cobalt directly from miners, marking a further move by original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) to ensure certainty of ra...Read More

Copper cathode premiums softened in Shanghai over the past week, but strengthened in the Italian market. Meanwhile, the US market traded sideways, with market participants there expecting an upward move in the near term. Shanghai cif premiums soften as arbitrage diminishes Upside seen in Southeast Asia US market trades sideways; near-term rise eyed Italian premium ticks higher, rest of Europe flat...Read More

Base metals prices on the London Metal Exchange were on divergent paths at the close on Wednesday March 14, with copper leading the gains. The three-month zinc price was the worst affected today because prices were over 2% lower at the close - fresh deliveries into LME-listed warehouses in New Orleans put pressure on prices. "Zinc is down on account of another 10,000 tonne increase in LME stock ho...Read More

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said Canada could use tariffs to fight any “increased pressure” of steel dumping into Canada aimed at circumventing new U.S. restrictions.The tariffs Donald Trump unveiled last week could prompt steel to be shipped instead through Canada to skirt the levies, Trudeau said Tuesday at an ArcelorMittal Dofasco plant in Hamilton, Ontario. The prime minister is...Read More

Zinc and lead premiums were unchanged this week, despite a consolidating London Metal Exchange zinc price and with consumers, for the most part, anticipating cheaper buying levels in the coming weeks. European, US and Asia zinc premiums stable after backwardation narrows Price drop on LME, COMEX, SHFE yet to trigger consumer buying on zinc Additional orders for lead ingotsEuropean zinc premiums re...Read More

Comex copper prices hit a multi-week high in Wednesday morning trading in the United States after the publication of positive Chinese data.Copper for May settlement on the Comex division of the New York Mercantile Exchange climbed 4.7 cents or 1.5% to trade recently at $3.1850 per lb Earlier this morning, China's industrial production grew 7.2% year on year in January-February 2018, a full percent...Read More

Although base metals are under pressure in the short term, we have a bullish bias to our 2018 price forecasts given the supportive background of solid global economic growth and the fact that all six base metal markets look set to be in fundamental deficit this year. But each has a slightly different supply-side story and this aspect should be the main differentiator. For example, zinc's narrative...Read More

Despite Chinese winter smelter production cuts generally falling short of expectations and domestic stocks continuing to climb - both of which suggest the market remains far more comfortably supplied at this point than aluminium bulls had been anticipating - prices still rallied into the year-end to reach $2,290/tonne for the first time since March 2012.And after a New Year pull-back the strength...Read More

Copper prices were working lower during most of December and in the absence of any bullish triggers we had been expecting that trend to continue. But in late December, fund buying picked up aggressively, driving prices to a fresh multi-year high of $7,203/tonne. There was little fundamental justification for this and we should consider it a warning that speculators and investors feeling optimistic...Read More

Lead prices remain on their steady uptrend since the summer lows last year and in January have been eroding resistance around October's 6-year high above $2,600/tonne. We expect the underlying strengthening fundamentals, especially on the supply side, to maintain the uptrend this year. Primary producers may well struggle to respond to higher lead prices and we doubt there is much hoarded scrap aro...Read More

For a number of years problems at Ilva, the largest steelworks in Europe, have been casting shadow over the performance of the whole Italian steel industry. Will an acquisition of Ilva by a consortium led by ArcelorMittal, now in its final stage, be a game changer for the market?Following multiple reports of environmental and health problems caused by the Taranto plant, in 2013 Ilva was placed und...Read More

China announced that it had terminated steel production in all the country's illegal induction furnaces by the end of June last year. The majority of the operators in China are primarily small size private mills that use low quality scrap to produce substandard rebar. These rebars are mixed with grade III (HRB400) rebar and sold at a discount to construction contractors. For a long period, the gov...Read More

As at the Gold Tent blogLowest Price/CashflowGold Miners offering historic value buying opportunityRead More

So President Trump confirmed, last week, that from later this week, he will formally introduce a blanket tariff on steel imports, at 25%, and aluminium, at 10%.Both tariffs are in fact higher than those recommended by the DOC (Dept. of Commerce). In return, he stated to a number of metal manufacturers Thursday (March 1) "You'll have to regrow your industries; that's all I'm asking". To be fair to...Read More

In the assumption that one of the three recommendations by the DOC (Dept. of Commerce) is adopted and unlike section 201 made permanent, US producer prices (FOB Midwest mill) are unlikely to fall in the short term but the degree of gains could be quite different.In this article we examine "option 3" - a quota regime, which restricts foreign steel to 63% of the 2017 total. In this scenario the pric...Read More

The closure of some induction furnaces in China in 2016 followed by the government's crackdown on all unlicensed IFs in mid-2017 freed up some scrap volumes, albeit arguably of low-quality material. Chinese domestic scrap prices came under pressure from the increased supply, which prevented them from keeping pace with the rise in steel and other raw material markets in the fourth quarter of 2016;...Read More

   •  Easing USD bearish pressure prompts some fresh selling.   •  Fading safe-haven demand adds to the downward pressure.  Gold surrendered its early gains to $1330 area, or one-week tops, and has now retreated to the lower end of the daily trading range.  A combination of factors, ranging from fading Fed rate hike expectations and the latest Whit...Read More