Zinc

Metals Off to a Strong Start in 2012

by Stuart Burns on February 6, 2012

Style:    Category: Commodities, Global Trade, Non-ferrous Metals

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A report in the FT notes the Chinese manufacturing sector has made a surprisingly strong start to the year, as the purchasing managers index (PMI), an important gauge of factory growth, rose to 50.5 in January from 50.3 a month earlier. The result helped underpin recent strength in metals prices, Standard Bank wrote in a [...]

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Rio Tinto, Others Striking Gold, Copper and Nickel in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula – Part One

by Taras Berezowsky on December 1, 2011

Style:    Category: Commodities, Ferrous Metals, Minor Metals, Non-ferrous Metals, Public Policy

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Commodity demand, namely for industrial metals such as copper and nickel, and their corresponding prices, has finally pushed Rio Tinto, HudBay Minerals and other companies to begin resurrecting long-slumbering mines, mine sites and mills in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. Once the center of North America’s copper operations in the 19th century, the ËœUP,’ as it’s known, [...]

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Zinc’s Novel Properties Opening Up New Technologies

by Stuart Burns on November 18, 2011

Style:    Category: Commodities, Non-ferrous Metals, Product Developments

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Every now and then we come across an interesting (if slightly offbeat) application for metals that we feel deserves mention. A research team led by Ganpati Ramanath, in collaboration with researchers at the University of Wollongong in Australia (no, you didn’t mis-read that — the University of Wollongong) have been working with zinc oxide to [...]

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Why “Farm-Fresh Food” in China May Be a Thing of the Distant Past

by Taras Berezowsky on November 8, 2011

Style:    Category: Green, Minor Metals, Non-ferrous Metals

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China’s heavy metal appetite for the likes of lead, zinc, copper and other building blocks of construction and transportation has rendered much of its environment less-than-fit for human existence. All you need is a stroll down a Beijing street in the summer to realize that. But this isn’t really news to any of us “ [...]

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Rising Zinc Inventories May Not Mean Lower Prices – Part Two

by Stuart Burns on October 31, 2011

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

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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 [...]

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Do Rising Zinc Inventories Mean Prices Have Further to Fall? – Part One

by Stuart Burns on October 31, 2011

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

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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 [...]

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LME Week: Amidst Copper Drop and Commodities Selloff, What to Expect in London

by Taras Berezowsky on October 4, 2011

Style:    Category: Commodities, Inventory Stock Levels, Macroeconomics, Non-ferrous Metals, Supply & Demand

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Now that October’s here, the world’s premier metal event is upon us — LME Week, held in London. Top metal producers’ executives “ think Rio Tinto, BHP Billiton, Codelco, etc. “ bankers, and traders get together, eat pricey hors d’oeuvres and booze it up amidst talking metals. For the producers, it’s mainly about keeping profits [...]

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Commodity Review and Second-Half Outlook – Part Two

by Taras Berezowsky on July 26, 2011

Style:    Category: Commodities, Inventory Stock Levels, Macroeconomics, Metal Prices, Non-ferrous Metals, Supply & Demand

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Continued from “Commodity Review and Second-Half Outlook – Part One”: Aluminum, Zinc and the LME Although aluminum by some standards has been in the dumps lately (i.e. throughout Q2), we can encapsulate much of the light metal’s activity to the LME warehousing issue. Even though the LME has just doubled the amount of tonnage that [...]

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