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

Here are five Fastmarkets stories you might have missed on Wednesday April 8 that are worth another look.

World trade will fall by more this year than during the downturn brought on by the global financial crisis of 2008-09 as the impacts of the Covid-19 pandemic are felt.

The fate of the steel world continues to hang in the balance: Numerous scrapyards have stopped operations, blast furnaces around the world have stopped and aggressive offers by traders for Russian and Indian supply have pushed prices down further.

Chinese-Australian miner MMG has declared force majeure at its major copper project Las Bambas after Peru extended its national state of emergency, Fastmarkets learned.

French mining and metals group Eramet will put on hold the construction of its Argentinian lithium production plant for an indefinite period due to the economic uncertainty sparked by the Covid-19 pandemic.

Citic Metal, the exclusive sales agent in China for ferro-niobium from Companhia Brasileira de Metalurgia e Mineração, has set its quarterly price for the April-June period at 205,000-225,000 yuan ($29,035-31,867) per tonne, market sources told Fastmarkets.

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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.