Continued from Part One. In contrast, consumers of tin (arguably a market much more in balance than oversupplied aluminum) are not facing high spot delivery premiums because mills are keeping the market well-supplied with direct deliveries, said to be at premiums for high-grade tin over the LME cash price of $625 to $650 a ton, [...]
by Stuart Burns on May 10, 2012
Style: Market Analysis
Category: Commodities, Inventory Stock Levels, Investing Hedging, Non-ferrous Metals
Keywords: Aluminum, aluminum prices, base metal premiums, Copper, copper prices, LME, Nickel, Tin
Metals buyers are an assiduous lot, carefully tracking and recording the price movement of those base metals on which the materials and components their firm depends with admirable diligence. Ask a metals buyer for the current copper price and he will often have the number to within a cent per pound off the top of [...]
When we think of tin, we tend to think of tin cans — of course, comparatively only a tiny amount of tin goes into the packaging industry nowadays. The cost alone has driven the use of cheaper alternatives, reducing the percentage used down to 16-17 percent of total tin consumption. Tin still remains an important [...]
A keynote speech made by Brian Menell (chief executive of Kemet Group and CEO of Tinco, a vertically integrated tin miner) at the Mines and Money Conference in London, addresses a growing issue in the mining industry — namely, resource nationalism. Brian Menell defines resource nationalism as growing assertiveness by host governments and regimes in [...]
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. [...]
Source: watoday.com.au Arguably, tantalum should have been included in our Best Of Conflict Minerals post, as it is one of the officially classified conflict minerals; and tin is a key non-ferrous metal that is not all that minor, especially as it also fits into the conflict minerals rubric. Nonetheless, we figured this tripartite of most-read [...]
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 [...]
It must have been a nightmare trying to manage price risk at tinplate and solder producers these last two years. The bull narrative for tin seemed to be set fair at the end of last year; on the back of supply tightness, three-month prices charged to an all-time high of $33,600 per ton in April [...]
