ASIAN MORNING BRIEF 07/11: Base metals lose more ground on LME; Brazil’s CSN negotiates slab supply before stoppage; Katanga suspends cobalt exports from DRC

The latest news and price moves to start the Asian day on Wednesday November 7.

Base metals futures prices on the London Metal Exchange fell again on Tuesday November 6 while uncertainty continued about the outcome of the midterm elections in the United States and that country’s trade relations with China. Read more in our live futures report.

Here are how prices looked at the close of trading:

Brazilian flat and long steelmaker Companhia Siderúrgica Nacional (CSN) has been negotiating with slab producers to build up stocks before one of its own blast furnaces stops production next June, a source close to CSN said.

Glencore’s Katanga Mining will temporarily stop selling cobalt from its Kamoto Project in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) after finding excessive levels of uranium in the cobalt hydroxide produced there, the company said. Less than 1,500 tonnes of finished cobalt are affected.

Comex copper prices staged a modest recovery in the US due to a softening dollar and speculative buying. The copper price for December settlement on the Comex division of Nymex recovered by 0.35 cents to $2.7595 per lb.

The price for rebar imported into the United Arab Emirates (UAE) fell in the week to Tuesday, sources told Fastmarkets. Local producers were still offering rebar at 2,016 dirhams ($549) per tonne ex-works, unchanged, this week. Meanwhile, rebar from Oman was on offer in the UAE at $525 per tonne cfr on a theoretical weight basis, and from Turkey at $510 per tonne cfr, on the same basis.

A major zinc producer has considered increasing the 2019 refined zinc premium for Chinese customers by up to $20 per tonne, citing expected tightness in Southeast Asia in the first half of next year. That’s one of 10 things we learned from the 21st International Lead & Zinc Conference last week in Baoji, Shaanxi province, in China.

Iron ore exports from Port Hedland in Western Australia fell year on year and month on month in October, leading to tighter supplies of Australian material in the seaborne market and pushing prices above $75 per tonne cfr China.

What to read next
The most recent financial results published by base metals mining companies highlight just how inflation is affecting profit margins, with increasing wages, financing costs and input prices all hitting profits, sources told Fastmarkets in the week to Thursday March 28
Century Aluminum is among those selected to start award negotiations for up to $500 million in Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and Inflation Reduction Act funding to build a new aluminium smelter, the company said on Monday March 25
Participants in the copper concentrates market are struggling to comprehend an “unstoppable” decline in treatment and refinement charges (TC/RCs), with every week bringing spot deals at fresh lows and rumors each “crazier” than the last, sources have told Fastmarkets
The US Department of Energy selected five base metals projects to receive more than $900 million in federal investment from its Industrial Demonstration Program (IDP), leading to a reduction of four million tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions annually, according to a statement by the Department on Monday March 25
Aluminium producer and recycler Constellium announced on Tuesday March 12 that the company is moving to test hydrogen utilization at an industrial scale as a power source in its casthouses
Fastmarkets has corrected its MB-ALU-0002 alumina index, fob Australia and its MB-ALU-0010 alumina inferred index, fob Brazil, which were published incorrectly on Monday March 18.