The London Metal Exchange and Fastmarkets launched three new cash-settled derivative contracts on Monday March 11 to provide effective risk management tools for the aluminium, alumina and cobalt markets.
The LME is at the heart of yet another warehousing conundrum, with pressure mounting for a ruling on why the linked load-in/load-out rule was not activated at end of January despite a large queue of Glencore-owned aluminium appearing at Istim’s warehouses in Malaysia.
Malaysia and India have unique competitive advantages in manganese alloy production that other Asian alloy producers are unable to match, according to panelists at Fastmarkets’ Asian Ferro-alloys conference in Hong Kong on Monday March 11.
The global copper supply chain could be underestimating the market impact of Chinese scrap cuts amid the country’s growing consumption, established industry expert Jonathan Barnes told Fastmarkets.
A move toward buying almost all ferro-alloys on long-term contracts has left the spot market industry in the United States so quiet that some traders are looking at China to understand spot fundamentals, Barry Lazar, chief executive officer of steel raw materials supplier Medima, said this week.
