IN CASE YOU MISSED IT: 5 key stories from January 8

Here are five Fastmarkets MB stories you might have missed on Tuesday January 8 that are worth another look.

The penetration of nickel-cobalt-manganese type-811 batteries into the Chinese electric vehicle industry will be quite limited in 2019, market participants have told Fastmarkets.

A new duty on imported copper raw materials in Zambia has already led to consequences, with producers planning to reduce output while some concentrates from the neighboring Democratic Republic of the Congo could be diverted to other markets, including China, Fastmarkets has learned.

India’s Supreme Court has upheld an earlier order to reopen Sterlite Copper’s Tuticorin smelter, which was closed for environmental reasons, parent company Vedanta said on Tuesday January 8.

European long steel buyers were quiet throughout December on uncertainties arising from the United States’ various trade wars, but a European Commission quota proposal in January has offered some hope of more certainty to sellers.

The US ferrous scrap market is clearly a buyer’s market in January, with sellers of steel turnings feeling the biggest sting in a monthly settlement rife with huge corrections.

What to read next
The influential annual treatment and refining charge (TC/RC) benchmark that sets the price that smelters charge miners to process their copper concentrate could be at risk, according to multiple market sources, although most believe the system, or elements of it, will remain
Fastmarkets' initial low-carbon premium for nickel briquettes captured existing regional price differences, with growing awareness and legislative incentives indicating there is potential for a strong market to emerge
The Chilean government is pushing ahead with plans for a new copper smelter despite the global smelting crisis, Chile’s minister of mining, Aurora Williams told Fastmarkets, adding that the state will also play a key role in developing the country’s premium lithium assets
Just under two weeks ago, the chair of BHP made a phone call to his counterpart at mining peer Anglo American and set in motion a flurry of activity designed to create the largest copper producer in the world
Brazilian aluminium supply coming from Companhia Brasileira de Alumínio (CBA) is said to have tightened, helping to boost the P1020A ingot premium, market participants told Fastmarkets in the two weeks to Wednesday April 24
In anticipation of a tight market, copper concentrate traders have locked in 2025 volumes at notably low treatment charges, with deals being placed well below the long-term industry benchmarks