A summary of China's base metal imports figures in March 2018.Refined copper Month total: 309,003 tonnes Month-on-month change: +34.58% Year-on-year change: +5.69% Copper ore and concentrates Month total: 1.60 million tonnes Month-on-month change: +10.25% Year-on-year change: -1.57%* Copper scrap Month total: 222,969 tonnes Month-on-month change: +71.76% Year-on-year change: -37.72% *...Read More

Anglo American produced 154,900 tonnes of copper in the first quarter of this year, a 9% jump from 142,600 tonnes in the corresponding period a year ago. On a quarterly basis, production was up 4%, from 142,600 tonnes in October-December 2017. "Our operations have made a solid start to 2018, delivering a 4% increase in total production," said chief executive Mark Cutifani."This reflects our consis...Read More

Competition between Brazilian flat steel producers can get in the way of the companies' plans to increase prices by June, according to local flat steel association Inda."The problem to any price increases is the steelmaker's fight for market share," Inda president Carlos Loureiro said on Tuesday April 24. Earlier this month, Brazil's Usiminas announced plans to increase its domestic prices for...Read More

The United States government has been pushing to apply quotas to steel exports from Brazil following negotiations stemming from the Section 232 investigation, according to Brazilian steel institute A??o Brasil."The US government has flagged it plans to work with quotas," A??o Brasil executive president Marco Polo de Mello Lopes said on Tuesday April 24.Brazil was temporarily excluded from a 25% Se...Read More

Brazilian flat steel sales increased by 3.40% year-on-year in March, amid a slower-than-expected recovery in steel demand, according to national flat steel association Inda.Sales from distributors amounted to 262,900 tonnes last month, compared with 254,200 tonnes in the corresponding period in 2017, Inda said on Tuesday April 24."The recovery of the steel market has lost steam," Inda president Ca...Read More

Flat steel import prices in the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia increased this week, but demand was not strong enough to support price increases, sources told Metal Bulletin on Tuesday April 24. Buyers preferred to postpone bookings ahead of the Islamic holy month of Ramadan which starts in mid-May and will lead to a further reduction in market activity. Strong demand for...Read More

Gerdau has appointed Chia Yuan Wang president of its North American long steel division, with immediate effect, the Brazil-based steel producer said on Tuesday April 24.Wang takes over from Gerdau's chief executive officer, Gustavo Werneck, who took an interim role as president of the North American business after Peter Campo left the firm at the end of January, when a change in the mill's...Read More

This is just a quick response to a comment by Tom. I originally created this Leapfrog viewer file for a previous post on Brucejack, focusing on a small area of the mine that I have put into Leapfrog.Original post here - linkDownload the Leapfrog viewer file from here (link)The key slides are:Slide 2 - The PR grades (i.e. the smeared grades) - nice juicy think gold interceptsGold fecking everywhere...Read More

Earnings at Russia's largest steelmaker, Novolipetsk Steel (NLMK), soared by 31% year-on-year in the first quarter of 2018 on favorable pricing conditions and higher export volumes.NLMK's earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization (Ebitda) for the three months totaled $812 million, against $618 million in the corresponding period last year, according to its latest financial sta...Read More

A summary of China's ferro-alloys imports in March 2018.Chrome ore Month total: 1.55 milion tonnes Month-on-month change:+30.59% Year-on-year change:+53.86%* Ferro-chrome Month total: 258,779 tonnes...Read More

Here are 10 key takeaways from Metal Bulletin's and Industrial Minerals' first Battery Materials conference in Shanghai on April 18-19. Bringing online new lithium supply remains a painful process: Bringing new capacity on stream is not easy and it is still difficult to bring new lithium projects online due technical and weather-related issues, as well as lack of investment and know-how, according...Read More

Chinese vanadium exporters lowered their offer prices over the past week due to the weakened Chinese domestic market and a lack of interest from foreign buyers. Meanwhile, the European and US markets continued their slide. Chinese export prices slide on softer domestic prices, limited foreign buyer interestEuropean ferro-vanadium prices continue to suffer from profit-taking US ferro-vanadium marke...Read More

Anglo American boosted manganese ore production in the first quarter of 2018 year on year, coinciding with higher manganese ore prices, although sales dropped 1% year on year. Anglo American produced 881,000 tonnes of manganese ore in the first three months of this year, compared with 823,000 tonnes in the same period last year. Manganese ore production was up 7% year on year, but fell 10% on a qu...Read More

A series of government policies will aid the rapid acceleration of electric vehicle (EV) sales in China - with market penetration projected to reach 7% among all types of vehicles in the country by 2020, according to Jia Hongtao, director of Beijing Electric Vehicle Co Ltd.EVs in China are expected to number around 2 million by 2020, with more optimistic forecasts placing that figure at closer to...Read More

Summary of Anglo American's production results for the three months ended March 31, 2018.(First-quarter total, % change year-on-year) Copper 155,000 tonnes, +9%...Read More

Turkish domestic prices for ferrous scrap from shipbreaking went up slightly during the week that ended on April 23, while domestic auto bundle scrap prices were largely stable, sources said on Tuesday April 24.Metal Bulletin's weekly price assessment for melting scrap from shipbreaking in the Turkish domestic market was $348-355 per tonne delivered, up from last week's $341-352...Read More

The latest bids, offers and deals in the global markets for iron ore, pig iron, direct-reduced iron and other steelmaking raw materials. Latest transaction: iron oreIron oreRio Tinto, tender, 170,000 tonnes of...Read More

Seaborne iron ore prices fell on Tuesday April 24, in line with a decline in the paper market.Metal Bulletin 62% Fe Iron Ore Index: $67.26 per tonne cfr Qingdao, down by $0.41 per tonneMetal Bulletin 58% Fe Premium Index: $56.08 per tonne cfr Qingdao, up by $0.10 per tonneMetal Bulletin 65% Fe Iron Ore Index: $85.30 per tonne cfr Qingdao, down by $0.30 per tonneMetal Bulletin 62% Fe China Port Pri...Read More

The pessimism in the seaborne coking coal market is not showing any signs of letting up with sellers lowering their offers for the steelmaking raw material on Tuesday April 24.Offers for premium hard coking coal were heard around $180-185 per tonne cfr China during the day, compared with $185-192 per tonne cfr a day earlier."There are still May-laycan cargoes in the market, and June-laycan cargoes...Read More

Anglo American is anticipating a reduction of about $300-400 million in earnings for 2018 due to an outage at its Minas-Rio iron ore operations in Brazil, where it does not expect to resume material production for the remainder of the year."The current expectation is that the operations will begin to ramp up in the fourth quarter of 2018," the miner said on Tuesday April 24.Output at Minas-Rio dro...Read More