Japan

When a Strong Currency Is Not a Good Idea – Part Two

by Stuart Burns on February 8, 2012

Style:    Category: Commodities, Macroeconomics

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Continued from Part One. As the FT report says, just this year the Australian dollar is up nearly 6 percent against the US dollar since the start of January, and BHP Billiton, not usually thought of as a high-cost producer, announced last week that it would temporarily cut production at its Mount Keith nickel mine [...]

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Falling Tin Prices Hide Potential for Strong Rises in 2012

by Stuart Burns on January 19, 2012

Style:    Category: Commodities, Non-ferrous Metals, Supply & Demand

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Taking a first pass over the World Bureau of Metal Statistics’ monthly bulletin report on 2011 production, consumption and inventory up to the end of November, one could be excused for thinking the tin market was operating in a comfortable surplus and the sell-off seen in 2011 is a reflection of a market in oversupply. [...]

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Thailand’s Floods Felt Around the World, Disrupting Global Manufacturing

by Stuart Burns on November 22, 2011

Style:    Category: Global Trade, Inventory Stock Levels

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The floodwaters may be slowly — agonizingly slowly — receding, but like ripples on a pond, the ramifications of Thailand’s recent floods are spreading around the globe and forward in time. According to Businessweek, at least 533 people have been killed since late July, when monsoon rains began lashing Thailand. Flooding worsened in October, when [...]

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Aerospace Business Booming, Despite Western Defense Cutbacks

by Stuart Burns on November 16, 2011

Style:    Category: Commodities, Global Trade

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It would seem not everyone is frozen by indecision in the headlights of the European debt crisis. In many emerging markets, both governments and corporations are forging ahead with ambitious investments with plenty of money in the pocket or access to ready sources of finance. At the Dubai Air Show, Emirates Airlines, fast earning itself [...]

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Hyundai Motor: Equal Parts Steel Mill and Carmaker – Will It Pay Off?

by Stuart Burns on November 7, 2011

Style:    Category: Ferrous Metals

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Debate has raged for decades about the benefits of integrated production facilities in the automotive industry. Arguably, Henry Ford started it at Rouge River in the 1920s when he built a complex capable of taking in raw materials such as iron ore at one end of a 2000-acre site and producing a finished car at [...]

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India Looking to Upgrade Its Infrastructure

by Stuart Burns on November 2, 2011

Style:    Category: Macroeconomics, Public Policy

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India watchers are used to announcements of major infrastructure projects amid great fanfare, only for them to come to nothing — bogged down in India’s famous bureaucracy, land claims and lack of finance. The government’s announcement with Japan in 2006 of a joint mega-infrastructure project is one such example. Said to cost an eye-popping US [...]

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Iron Ore E-Auctioning: Another Worry to Indian Steel Producers – Part Four

by Lisa Reisman on October 27, 2011

Style:    Category: Commodities, Ferrous Metals, Public Policy, Supply & Demand

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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 [...]

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Japanese Research Team Finds Massive Rare Earth Deposits on the Ocean Floor

by Stuart Burns on July 7, 2011

Style:    Category: Commodities, Green, Minor Metals, Supply & Demand

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Necessity is the mother of invention they say.  Rarely have we seen as much of a crisis in the metals consuming industry as we see at the moment with Rare Earth supplies. In the week that the Telegraph reports China has further tightened its stranglehold on the supply of rare earths by limiting the number [...]

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