My hometown of Hoffman Estates, Illinois, is not known for much. But the local farm has turned itself into a mega-business, drawing thousands of people during the pumpkin season. We’ve been taking our kids there since they could first walk (even our youngest went this year — and he can only sit among the pumpkins). [...]
Well, today — give or take — the world is 7 billion people big. That, at least, is what the UN has been saying. The fact that the world’s population hit 7 billion is almost less astounding than the fact that it was 6 billion only 12 years ago! That means, of course, that each [...]
Continued from Part One. On the face of it, we would expect the price of zinc to have only one place to go, but intriguingly, HSBC is predicting a higher price next year and rising prices through the middle of the decade. This is because at current prices, many suppliers are sitting at the marginal [...]
As with all base metals, zinc demand took a severe knock post-2008. Up until then, demand had exceeded supply, and as inventory levels plummeted the metal price rocketed, as the graph below from HSBC illustrates. Source: HSBC However, the peak was hit in 2007 and in a classic reverse of plummeting prices feeding through into [...]
MetalMiner welcomes guest contributor Rahul Jalan, a Chennai-based senior research analyst in metals for Beroe, Inc. who tracks the global steel and rare earths supply chain and analyzes global procurement developments to help develop procurement solutions for the company. Beroe specializes in providing procurement intelligence for a broad swath of industries, enabling buyers’ decision-making. Previous [...]
MetalMiner welcomes guest contributor Rahul Jalan, a Chennai-based senior research analyst in metals for Beroe, Inc. who tracks the global steel and rare earths supply chain and analyzes global procurement developments to help develop procurement solutions for the company. Beroe specializes in providing procurement intelligence for a broad swath of industries, enabling buyers’ decision-making. Previous [...]
The absence of a global futures market for iron ore leads one to think price moves in Asia or Europe have little or no impact on domestic raw material costs to producers in the US. It’s also true to say consumers of copper or aluminum watch the LME or track the SHFE with more regularity [...]
We couldn’t help but click on the recent spate of articles about the UAW Chrysler Talks Facebook page, and how the union is using social media to facilitate discussion over the new four-year contract with Chrysler that its workers just voted to ratify. (Although, the skilled workers did not according to the Detroit Free Press, [...]
