Statistics South Africa said the data, released late last week, showed the COVID-19 pandemic and lockdown regulations had "an extensive impact on economic activity".The department said PGM production fell 62% compared with a year earlier, iron ore fell 68.7%, gold 59.6% and manganese ore by 57.6%.It said seasonally adjusted mining production decreased by 34.1% in April compared with March 2020.Col...Read More
The UG2 chrome ore price retreated for the first time since March 20 due to reduced buying interest in contrast to the consistent liquidity over the past few weeks. Fastmarkets' chrome ore South Africa UG2 concentrates index basis 42%, cif China fell to $169 per tonne on Friday June 12, from $170 per tonne a week earlier, putting an end to a five-week uptrend. The market was described as quie...Read More
Here are five Fastmarkets stories you might have missed on Monday June 15 that are worth another look.Jaguar-Land Rover will cut up to 1,100 employees in the UK, while posting a pre-tax loss amid the coronavirus pandemic, it announced on June 15 in its financial results.Latin American steelmakers were operating at 42% capacity in April after at least seven blast furnaces were halted to balance sup...Read More
Aluminium producer Hydro has reported a 42% drop in sales from its Extruded Solutions business unit and a 21% drop in rolled product sales for April-May, due to the impact of Covid-19 restrictions.The Norwegian company announced that its sales from its Extruded Solutions business unit were down 42% in April and May of this year, compared with the same months in 2019, due to weaker market demand fo...Read More
Equity markets started to show some weakness last week, although dips were being bought, but this morning, Monday June 15, the mood seems to have become more concerned about the rise in second waves of Covid-19 in many countries and the socio-economic implications of these. Base metals prices on the London Metal Exchange were weaker, as were most on the Shanghai Futures Exchange. Asian-Pacific equ...Read More
Nornickel's estimated $150-million cost to clean a company oil leak is "hugely preliminary", the Russian miner said in a press conference two weeks after the biggest oil spill in the Arctic Circle since the Exxon Valdez.And the company expects by June 26 a government assessment of penalties, from the Environment Supervision Agency (Rosprirodnadzor), Nornickel said during the teleconference on June...Read More
Lithium Power International (ASX: LPI) is a pure-play lithium company focused on the development of Chile's next high-grade lithium mine. The Maricunga JV, in which LPI holds a 51% interest, is the highest quality, pre-production, lithium brine project, in South America and has one of the world's highest-grade lithium resources at 1,167 mg/l lithium and 8,500 mg/l potassium. The 2019 JORC and NI 4...Read More
The European Investment Bank (EIB) has granted a ?,?125 million ($140 million) loan to Belgium-based global material technologies and recycling group Umicore to partially finance the construction of a battery cathode material manufacturing facility in Poland.The EIB loan will cover approximately half of the project costs in the initial phase, with cathode materials produced supplying battery manuf...Read More
Thank you for joining us in a weekly technical look at the mid-cap oriented INK Canadian Insider (CIN) Index. Last week, the INK CIN took a spirited run at the 1,000 level but ran into heavy resistance at 992-993. Ultimately, it was then yanked downward along with correcting US markets and fell 40.95 points to close at 930.31 for a loss of 4.2%.MACD sunk 8.35 points to 0.43. A week after establis...Read More
Here are five Fastmarkets stories you might have missed on Monday June 15 that are worth another look.Jaguar-Land Rover will cut up to 1,100 employees in the UK, while posting a pre-tax loss amid the coronavirus pandemic, it announced on June 15 in its financial results.Latin American steelmakers were operating at 42% capacity in April after at least seven blast furnaces were halted to balance sup...Read More
Workers at Tata Steel IJmuiden in the Netherlands will continue industrial action after negotiations with the company's management fell through, the trade union FNV Metaal said on Sunday June 14.A strike on the night shift started on Sunday June 14 at 22:00 local time and affected pickling, cold rolling, an annealing furnace, continuous annealing lines 11 & 12 and tinning lines."The entire pr...Read More
Exporters of hot-rolled coil in Turkey and the Commonwealth of Independent States have been redirecting volumes to Asia from their traditional markets such as Europe.Steel demand and prices in Asia, notably China, started to recover in April after a slump in consumption caused by the Covid-19 pandemic. This revival happened earlier than in the other regions, where sellers in both Turkey and the CI...Read More
Special bar quality (SBQ) steel prices in the United States have again risen due to increased raw material costs, but demand remains weak, industry participants told Fastmarkets. On the hot-rolled side of the market, Fastmarkets' monthly price assessment for steel bar hot-rolled special bar quality (SBQ) 1-inch round 1000 series (carbon), fob mill US rose to $33.25 per hundredweight ($665 per shor...Read More
Strengths? The best performing precious metal for the week was gold, up 2.78 percent. After its 1.7 percent drop last Friday, gold rose back above $1,700 an ounce this week as investors took advantage of buying the dip. Commerzbank AG analyst Carsten Fritsch told Bloomberg that gold price declines are still seen as a buying opportunity. "Central banks are not expected to revers...Read More
- Dave Kranzler, Mining Stock Journal"No one ever loses equity in a bankruptcy case," U.S. Bankruptcy Judge David Jones said during a status conference in the J.C. Penney case last month. "Equity gets lost long before the case is filed."Hertz filed Chapter 11 under the U.S. Bankruptcy Code after the market closed on May 22nd. The filing was well telegraphed. The next day the stock took a cliff...Read More
Investment manias are nothing new on Wall Street, but this time the heavy betting is on the mania itself. Speculating on volatility is the latest fad, and it is metastasizing so quickly that in just two short months wagers that the stock market will grow even crazier have become the actual cause of its craziness. The bets mainly involve derivatives, including options and ETFs that are ti...Read More
Steve St. Angelo, SRSrocco Report The U.S. Shale Oil Industry is in serious trouble, even without the negative impacts of the global contagion. While it's no secret that shale oil wells suffer high decline rates, what is taking place in the country's largest oil field is quite alarming. The rate at which shale oil production is declining in the Permian should worry investors. In just three...Read More
We are on the horns of a dilemma, caught between the Scylla and Charybdis, a rock and a hard place, the devil and the deep blue sea, the anvil and the hammer. The walls are closing in. We're in a tight spot.All those metaphors (I could list more but will spare you) fit the present economic situation (some are now calling the omni-crisis) and I think will also describe the 2020s.Thanks to forces...Read More
Egypt's ministry of trade and industry plans to raise import duties on steel billet and rebar, Egyptian sources told Fastmarkets on Monday June 15.Officials from the ministry will meet steel producers this week to discuss the duty changes, the sources said.In April this year, the Egyptian ministry of trade and industry postponed...Read More