Vale's iron ore distribution and blending center at the Teluk Rubiah Maritime Terminal (TRMT) in Malaysia will continue working after all, Vale said on Friday March 20, having earlier warned that operations might be suspended at the end of the month.On Wednesday March 18, the miner had said that operations at the terminal could be suspended until March 31 due to the impact of local gover...Read More
Slab export prices from Brazilian producers dropped sharply in the week ended Friday March 20, with customers avoiding purchases amid uncertainty about the spread of the 2019-nCoV coronavirus pandemic.Fastmarkets' weekly price assessment for steel slab, export, fob main port Brazil, fell to $400-430 per tonne on Friday, compared with $460-470 per tonne a week earlier.By late last week, offers of B...Read More
An overview of the battery raw materials markets and their price moves from the past week.Read More
Key data from the pricing sessions in Asia, Europe and the United States for the week ended Friday March 20.ChinaThe UG2 chrome ore price continued lower for a fifth consecutive week, with South African sellers slashing offer prices to stimulate demandSpot domestic Chinese ferro-chrome prices...Read More
An overview of the minor metals markets and the reasons for their latest price moves.Read More
While countries start to lock down their borders to prevent the spread of the novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV), mining companies are beginning to halt production, delay projects and withdraw staff. It is a natural response to a very unexpected situation that would only worsen if left unchecked. For the mining sector, it means a raft of production from projects and operations around the world is being...Read More
The falling price of aluminium on the London Metal Exchange, combined with a weakening supply picture in Europe, is putting pressure on smelters' profit margins, but there are no reports of production cuts in the market yet, Fastmarkets understands.The LME three-month aluminium price benchmark hit a low of $1,579 per tonne during trading on March 19, its lowest since September 2016. Although LME a...Read More
The copper price closed below $5,000 per tonne on the London Metal Exchange, having traded no higher than $4,938 per tonne earlier on Friday March 20.The three-month copper contract ended at $4,810 per tonne, having bottomed out at $4,613 per tonne earlier despite 5,275 tonnes of warrants being cancelled. More than 25,000 lots changed hands.On-warrant copper stocks stand at 183,175 tonnes on Frida...Read More
The London Metal Exchange will temporarily close its open outcry trading floor and go to electronic price discovery from Monday March 23 as a precautionary measure amid the coronavirus (2019-nCoV) pandemic, it said. The open-outcry floor, one of the last of its kind in the world, has been operating from its disaster recovery site in Essex for the past week.The exchange said last week it may move t...Read More
The falling price of aluminium on the London Metal Exchange, combined with a weakening supply picture in Europe, is putting pressure on smelters' profit margins, but there are no reports of production cuts in the market yet, Fastmarkets understands.The LME three-month aluminium price benchmark hit a low of $1,579 per tonne during trading on March 19, its lowest since September 2016. Although LME a...Read More
The new issue of Aluminium Market Tracker is now online at metalbulletinresearch.com.In this edition, Fastmarkets' research team delivers key insights and forecasts into aluminium markets around the world.Aluminium price down 2.3% week-on-week amid stock market sell-offGlobal markets remain rattled by the spread of the novel coronavirus (2019-nCOV) across Europe and the United States. Panic-sellin...Read More
The new issue of the Seamless OCTG & Linepipe Market Tracker is now online at metalbulletinresearch.com.In this edition, Fastmarkets' research team delivers analysis of seamless OCTG and linepipe across international markets:Covid-19 underscores pipe outlookUnsurprisingly, the concern in the seamless pipe markets across the regions is the effect of the spread of Covid-19 on public health and econo...Read More
The new issue of the Steel Market Tracker is now online at metalbulletinresearch.com.In this edition, Fastmarkets' research team delivers key insights and forecasts into the long and flat products markets.This week's risks to our latest flat-rolled forecasts:The Chinese government is stepping up help to the economy, increasing banks' liquidity. But the spread of the coronavirus worldwide is likely...Read More
Fastmarkets' copper concentrates treatment and refining charge (TC/RC) index retreated during the week to Friday March 20 from its one-year high, reflecting expectations about falling supply from South American producers.A weekly brief on the Fastmarkets' copper concentrate index: The copper concentrate TC/RC index, cif Asia Pacific was calculated at $66.70 per tonne/6.67 cents per lb on Friday, d...Read More
Domestic prices in the north of Europe were unchanged day on day on Friday March 20 after a decrease the previous day, sources have told Fastmakets.Fastmarkets' daily steel hot-rolled coil index, domestic, exw Northern Europe, was stable day on day at ?,?470.00 ($507.28) per tonne on Friday. This followed a drop of ?,?7.31 per tonne day on day on March 19. ...Read More
Aluminium scrap prices in the United States were steady to weak as the impact of the novel coronavirus spread started to hit the industry, and some market participants continued to operate this past week despite business closures in the automotive industry and beyond."The situation is very fluid right now; our intentions are to continue running at reduced capacity," one US-based consumer said. "We...Read More
Chilean state-owned copper producer Codelco and the Federation of Copper Workers (FTC) - which represents all unions related to the miner - entered into an agreement on Friday March 20 to maintain some level of production in the company during the state of emergency declared by the federal government.While copper output will be adversely affected to some degree during the lockdown, workers and man...Read More
The copper price closed below $5,000 per tonne on the London Metal Exchange, having traded no higher than $4,938 per tonne earlier on Friday March 20.The three-month copper contract ended at $4,810 per tonne, having bottomed out at $4,613 per tonne earlier despite 5,275 tonnes of warrants being cancelled. More than 25,000 lots changed hands.On-warrant copper stocks stand at 183,175 tonnes on Frida...Read More
Anglo American will gradually reduce operations at its Los Bronces copper-molybdenum works in Chile following a government announcement about tackling the 2019-nCoV coronavirus pandemic, it said.It initially plans to minimize activity at the mine until March 31 when a 15-day period of national emergency in Chile is due to expire. This plan will be evaluated on a daily basis, however, the miner add...Read More
Glencore is not experiencing any material disruptions at its operating assets or within its supply chain due to the novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV), it said, but it has experienced an impact on certain smaller operations where governments have imposed restrictions.The Swiss mining and marketing company did not specify which smaller assets had been affected. Glencore operates in countries such as Per...Read More