Lack of support on the customer side led to a further slide in CIS steel billet export prices in the week to Thursday May 27, sources told Fastmarkets.Fastmarkets' daily steel billet index, export, fob Black Sea, CIS dropped to $659 per tonne on Thursday, down by $11 per tonne day on day.Interest in import billet from the part of China, which had been the main outlet for CIS-origin material remain...Read More

Upbeat US and China retail sales driving positive sentiment. Trading limited due to supply scarcity and India Covid-19 travel restrictions. Polished shortages stimulating rough buying at firm prices. Strong cash buyers making for good market liquidity, but India experiencing some pandemic-related payment concerns. Richemont FY jewelry sales +3% to $9.1B. Christie's HK sells $76.8M (82% by lot), in...Read More

Canada will seek to work with its allies and partners to develop supply chains that will help them to meet global climate goals, according to the associate deputy minister at the Department of Natural Resources Canada (NRCan).Shawn Tupper said that this will include building mineral value chains and downstream processing, products and technologies, and leveraging mining practices, to position Cana...Read More

RAPAPORT... Jeweler Mehul Choksi will likely be repatriated to India following his capture in Dominica, an island nation in the Caribbean, Reuters reported.Choksi's arrest comes two years after his nephew, Nirav Modi, was apprehended by the Metropolitan Police in the UK on behalf of the Indian authorities.The two fugitives, along with others, are alleged to have defrauded India's Punjab Natio...Read More

RAPAPORT... A matched pair of fancy-blue diamond earrings with an upper estimate of $770,000 will lead the Hong Kong Jewels & Jadeite auction at Phillips next week.The diamonds, weighing 1.12 and 1.13 carats, have been meticulously cut to maximize their color, the company said recently, calling these stones "one of the most desirable and sought-after of all jewels." The blue diamonds have...Read More

(IDEX Online) - A 73.11-carat fancy vivid yellow diamond will lead The Roaring Twenties 2.0 auction at Sotheby's New York next month.The Sienna Star, a VS2-clarity, natural color, cut-cornered square step-cut stone, is set in 18 karat white gold ring with about 4.45 carats of near-colorless F-G color, VS clarity diamonds.It is a described as one of the most important creations by London-...Read More

(IDEX Online) - Fugitive diamond trader Mehul Choksi was arrested yesterday in Dominica, three days after he disappeared from Antigua, about 120 miles away by sea.There is media speculation that after arriving on the tiny island by boat he was intending to travel by sea to Cuba, 1,150 miles away.He is wanted in his home country of India, where he and nephew Nirav Modi are accused of defrauding the...Read More

RAPAPORT... Sotheby's will offer a fancy-vivid-yellow diamond ring at its New York sale next month, estimating the piece could fetch up to $3 million.The cut-cornered square step-cut, 73.11-carat, VS2-clarity jewel by Mayfair designer Glenn Spiro, called The Sienna Star, is one of the largest fancy-vivid-yellow diamonds to come to auction, Sotheby's said Wednesday. The piece is one of the top...Read More

(IDEX Online) - A former Pandora worker says she's exposed a cheating customer who bought one ring for his girlfriend ... and another for his "sidepiece".The video, posted on TikTok, has attracted 2.6m views in 10 days.Eli from Montreal, Canada, says the customer came clean and explained who the rings were for when she asked if he wanted one receipt or two for the $45 and $50 silver and cubic...Read More

RAPAPORT... Belgium's polished-diamond exports more than quadrupled year on year to $566 million in April, reflecting the comparison with the peak of the 2020 coronavirus crisis, according to data the Antwerp World Diamond Centre (AWDC) released this week. Shipments were down versus March, however, as trading returned to more normal levels following a release of pent-up demand earlier in the...Read More

Exporters of metals such as tin, tantalum and cobalt from the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) were closely monitoring the situation in the country following the eruption of the Nyiragongo volcano over the weekend of May 22-23.The eruption, and the subsequent aftershocks, have forced the evacuation of thousands of people from the city of Goma, the capital of North Kivu province, which is around...Read More

Trade union members employed at BHP's operations center in Santiago de Chile were set to begin an indefinite strike on Thursday May 27, Fastmarkets has heard.Around 200 employees represented by the union were to stop working at BHP's Center of Integrated Operations, which manages the concentrates and cathode machinery at the company's Escondida and Spence copper mines.The strike was called after u...Read More

German copper producer Aurubis has started tests for the use of hydrogen and nitrogen to replace natural gas in its copper anode production processes, advancing the company's goal of achieving carbon-neutrality by 2050, it announced on Thursday May 27.The tests started on Thursday and were intended to investigate hydrogen use in continuous operation until the late summer. The long-term goal was to...Read More

Prices for steel billet imported into Egypt fell in the week to Thursday May 27, largely due to a lack of demand, sources told Fastmarkets.Global billet prices have been decreasing recently and there was hardly any demand for imports into Egypt, they added.Fastmarkets' daily steel billet index, export, fob Black Sea, was $659 per tonne on May 27, down from $691 per tonne on May 20.Demand for rebar...Read More

Domestic prices for hot-rolled coil in Europe were broadly flat day on day, reflecting a lack of trading activity in the spot market while supply is tight, sources told Fastmarkets on Thursday May 27.Fastmarkets calculated its steel hot-rolled coil index, domestic, exw Northern Europe at ?,?1,138.33 ($1,391.57) per tonne on May 27, down by ?,?2.67 per tonne from ?,?1,141 per tonne on May 26. The i...Read More

Turkish rebar and wire rod export prices made a downward correction in the week to Thursday May 27, having risen steadily since the end of April, market participants told Fastmarkets this week.Turkish steelmakers lowered their rebar export offers to $750-780 per tonne fob on an actual-weight basis, down from last week's $780-790 per tonne. The downward movement followed a downturn in Asian steel p...Read More

Huntsman Set to Expand Nickel Sulphide Discovery at CanegrassSPONSOREDhuntsman explorationSpeaking on company webinar on Wednesday morning, Jonathan Barnes, Roskill's principal copper consultant, said e-scrap was an "undervalued and unappreciated resource, which is being wasted".Read More

Turkish prices for steel billet have gone down over the past week in line with the falling prices in China, while scrap import values supported the decrease, market sources said on Thursday May 27.Steel billet prices in China have made a downward correction in the past week, which consequently brought a decline in Turkish scrap import prices, because Turkey's billet and finished steel prices had b...Read More

Base metals prices on the London Metal Exchange and Shanghai Futures Exchange were mixed during the morning of Thursday May 27, as were broader markets – are these pauses, or early signs of a stall?* More US Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) members seem to be getting off the fence about talking about tapering* Chinese yuan continues to strengthen, is China using the yuan to reduce inflati...Read More

Turkish steel producers again stepped away from the deep-sea scrap market after a downturn in steel billet and finished steel prices, triggered by falling prices in China, market participants told Fastmarkets on Thursday May 27.Mills had only just returned to the market on Wednesday, when a Turkish steelmaker booked f 44,000 tonnes of HMS 1&2 (95:5) from the United States at $515 per tonne cfr.Tha...Read More