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The benchmark, agreed earlier in the week between one the world’s biggest zinc producers and the South Korean processor, included a reduction in the amount that smelters pay for silver, a byproduct in zinc concentrates, the sources said.
A payable for germanium will now apply in the benchmark for this year, unlike in the past, when it was not part of the byproduct payables, two sources said.
Fastmarkets has, however, heard conflicting accounts about the byproduct payables since March 6. One market participant said there had been no changes to the agreed payables for silver and germanium in this year’s benchmark.
“There is no change in the payables for silver and germanium,” a source close to Teck said.
When asked to clarify, a Teck spokesperson declined to comment.
While the headline benchmark number has gone up by $5 per tonne and would have been a boon for smelters’ margins, they were likely to take some revenue losses from paying for additional metal contained in the concentrates, such as silver and germanium, the four sources told Fastmarkets.
“The price of concentrates goes down while the TCs go up and I think this makes concentrates more expensive,” one of the four sources said. “A very low TC and only a $5 [per tonne] increase from an all-time low – that’s a very low settlement from a smelter’s point of view.”
A rally in precious metal prices this year has spurred demand for base metal concentrates, including zinc and lead, driving down the processing fees that smelters charge to producers.
The rise in prices was bolstering miners’ bargaining positions with smelters, especially for quality material containing byproducts such as precious metals, antimony, germanium and bismuth.
“If payables are evolving, that’s not exactly an increase in the [benchmark] terms. It’s just changing how terms are charged,” another source said.
Both Teck and Korea Zinc declined to comment at the time of publication.
Fastmarkets most recently assessed the zinc spot concentrate TC, cif China, at $10-50 per tonne on February 27, flat from two weeks earlier.
Some recent spot deals, particularly for material from Antamina, have attracted zinc TCs in negative figures amid an expansion in smelter capacity in China and Europe, one of the sources said.
Some traders have recently estimated TCs for shipments into China at zero.
“Increasingly,” one source said, “you have to adjust for the quality of the material, but recent spot deals are consistent with a very tight market.”
The lead spot concentrate TC, high silver, cif China, was assessed at $(240)-(200) per tonne on February 27, and the corresponding lead spot concentrate TC, low silver, cif China, at $(200)-(170) per tonne on the same day, unchanged from a month earlier.
Teck is among the world’s top producers of germanium, a rare metal extracted from zinc ores and in demand globally for use in semi-conductors.
The increase in demand for byproduct payables meant that traders and smelters were no longer just concerned about the headline TC number, one source said.
“In years gone by, it was the headline TC that mattered the most,” the source added. “It’s now difficult to talk about zinc TCs in general terms. We need to know the details of what germanium payables will apply in order to work out the final number.”
Eva Qi and Shiyue Zhao in Shanghai contributed to this article.
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