RAPAPORT... The Indian trade fell by most key measures in November,according to data from the Gem & Jewellery Export Promotion Council(GJEPC). Polished exports slid to their lowest level since December 2016, when demand dropped in the aftermath ofIndia's banknote demonetization, while rough shipments alsodropped significantly. The year-on-year slumps come amid weaker demand forsmaller goo...Read More
RAPAPORT... This was the year in which synthetic diamonds wentmainstream. De Beers launched its Lightbox brand, the US Federal TradeCommission (FTC) relaxed its rules for describing lab-grown diamonds, andthe likes of Macy's and JCPenney started stocking synthetics for theholiday. Two of those three stories feature in the top 10 most-read articles onDiamonds.net this year.Martin Rapaport's takes o...Read More
RAPAPORT... A pink diamond recently submitted to the Central GemLaboratory (CGL) in Tokyo was found to be a chemical vapor deposition (CVD)synthetic stone, treated only with Low Pressure-High Temperature (LPHT). The marquise brilliant-cut, 0.192-carat diamond is an unusualfind, as stones of this nature are generally treated with a multistep process thatfirst uses High Pressure-High Temperature (HP...Read More
(IDEX Online) - Russian diamond miner ALROSA reported that global jewelry sales rose 4% overall in the third quarter of 2018. North America, the largest diamond jewelry market, showed a 4% sales increase in Q3 compared to the same period last year. "According to key retailers, stable growth was driven by increased demand from the local population," the firm said. "In the Asia Pacific...Read More
Novolipetsk Steel (NLMK), Russia's largest steelmaker, will increase pig iron output at its Lipetsk site to meet own production needs, the company said on Tuesday December 18.NLMK will boost blast furnace (BF) No6 capacity by 8%, to 3.4 million tonnes per year, thus, the company will add around 250,000 tpy of pig iron capacity, Fastmarkets understands. Currently, the company is installing new blas...Read More
(IDEX Online) - De Beers sold rough diamonds with a provisional value of $540 million in the 10th sales cycle (Global Sightholder Sales and Auction Sales) of 2018. The miner's two previous sales had both been below $500 million. The miner reported confirmed sales of $442 million in the ninth cycle, compared with an initial provisional figure of $440 million. Bruce Cleaver...Read More
(IDEX Online) - Sales of fine jewelry and fine watches rose by 5.7 percent in the U.S. market in October, when compared to the same month a year ago, as the graph below illustrates. The rise is the second-lowest seen so far this year, but is nonetheless a solid increase. Overall sales in October, the last month for which figures are available, were an estimated $5.8 billion, accordi...Read More
LONDON – The biggest diamond ever found in North America has been unearthed by Dominion Diamond Mines and Rio Tinto Group at a mine in Canada’s frozen north.The 552 ct yellow gem was found at the Diavik mine in the Northwest Territories, and is almost three times the size of the next largest stone ever found in Canada. While Diavik and the neighboring Ekati mine produce some...Read More
French bank Natixis, information technology firm IBM and commodities trading group Trafigura have been working together for some time on a blockchain project for commodity trade finance in crude oil transactions in the United States. The end result is a distributed ledger platform, built on the Linux Foundation open-source Hyperledger Fabric, that is designed to modernize the largely paper-heavy g...Read More
PolarX builds bigger, richer Zackly pictureSPONSOREDpolar x limitedThe miner picked up another 28.87 million SolGold shares from third parties at a price of 40p, a premium to SolGold's London closing price overnight of 35.45p.The total investment equat...Read More
Glencore's Katanga Mining Ltd will pay the Ontario Securities Commission (OSC) around $22.5 million as part of a settlement over the copper-cobalt producer's historical disclosures.The payments are C$1.5 million ($1.2 million) in costs along with a voluntary payment of C$28.5 million.The company, which operates the Kamoto Copper Company in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), has also agreed to...Read More
Aqua Metals is nearing completion of the first phase of its two-stage capital improvement program, as well as implementing its plan to begin processing a portion of hard metallic lead into lead ingots. The California, United States-based company, whose AquaRefining technology is designed to recycle lead in a room-temperature, water-based process that emits significantly less pollution, expects to...Read More
Wang Chi-wei, a former vice president of Jiangxi Copper, has been officially arrested on corruption charges, the Supreme People's Procuratorate of the People's Republic of China said in a statement on Tuesday December 18.The arrest is based on an investigation carried out by the city of Nanchang's Supervisory Commission since October. Jiangxi Copper's 900,000 tpy Guixi smelter, the largest in Chin...Read More
Germany-based fertilizer producer K+S AG (FRA:SDF1) revised up its production outlook on Tuesday, as weather-related production stoppages at its Werra potash plant are expected to be shorter than previously thought.Production at the plant will now only be halted from December 24 to 26, K+S said, as recent rainfall raised water levels of the Werra river, used for minerals production and transpo...Read More
The latest metal markets news and price moves to start the North American day on Tuesday December 18.Base metals on the London Metal Exchange were lower across the board during morning trading on Tuesday December 18, with a broad sell-off across the complex capping prices and another fresh inflow of over 57,000 tonnes of aluminium restricting price action.After more than 104,000 tonnes of aluminiu...Read More
Arbitrage for copper, aluminium, zinc and nickel imported into China on Tuesday December 18*Copper -$119.12 (-823.87yuan)Aluminium -$425.13 (-2,940.21 yuan) Zinc -$115.93 ( -801.79 yuan) Nickel $247.23 (1,709.87 yuan) *Fastmarkets calculates the physical arbitrage for import...Read More
Christian Keidel joined downstream aluminium product producer Aludium at the start of December in the role of metal management director, Fastmarkets MB understands.Prior to joining Aludium, which comprises three former Alcoa mills in Spain and France, Keidel had been in charge of strategic purchasing at Constellium since January 2012....Read More
Base metals on the London Metal Exchange were lower across the board during morning trading on Tuesday December 18, with a broad sell-off across the complex capping prices, while another fresh inflow of more than 57,000 tonnes of aluminium did little to spur price action. After more than 104,000 tonnes of aluminium inflows this week, including a net inflow of 57,700 tonnes today, the metal's three...Read More
The latest news and price moves to start the Asian day on Wednesday December 19.Base metal prices on the London Metal Exchange were mostly lower at the close of trading on Tuesday December 18, with continued strength in the US dollar index limiting price action while lead futures gained more than 2% against a backdrop of multiyear lows in LME inventories. Read more in our live futures report.Here...Read More
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