IN CASE YOU MISSED IT: 5 key stories from August 21

Here are five Fastmarkets MB stories you might have missed on Wednesday August 21 that are worth another look.

Swiss trading house Trafigura has begun blending copper concentrates in Malaysia, with small batches of output being offered to the market, Fastmarkets has learned.

Zinc premiums in the United States widened upward in the week to Tuesday August 20 despite dampened consumption from steel mills, while lead premiums dropped in India and Southeast Asia, unaffected by Nystar’s Port Pirie outage.

The offtake agreement that sees Glencore market the vanadium pentoxide (V2O5) produced by Largo Resources in Brazil will not be renewed when it expires on April 30, 2020, the latter said late on August 20.

Turkey’s steel end-product consumption totaled 12.3 million tonnes in January-June 2019, down by 32.3% compared with the same period 2018, according to the Turkish Steel Producers’ Association (TÇÜD).

Nickel premiums in China fell due to a widened arbitrage loss in the week to August 20, while nickel premiums in Europe and the United States held steady during the quiet summer period despite a tightening forward curve and London Metal Exchange price volatility.

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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.
The publication of Fastmarkets’ US base metals prices were published early during the week of March 11-15 following the daylight saving time change in the US on March 10.