IN CASE YOU MISSED IT: 5 key stories from July 11

Here are five Fastmarkets MB stories you might have missed on Thursday July 11 that are worth another look.

Mexican steel association Canacero has denied that Mexican fabricated structural steel producers who export to the United States have been receiving subsidies, as alleged by US authorities.

One of the world’s biggest copper miners, Chile’s Antofagasta, began to break away from the traditional annual price benchmark system this week by sealing an early deal with Chinese smelters to supply concentrates for the first half of 2020. The deal has raised questions in the market over the viability of the annual copper concentrate treatment charge/refinement charge (TC/RC) benchmark system long before October, when negotiations typically start.

The London Metal Exchange nickel price rose to a three-month high of $13,140 per tonne during morning trading on Thursday July 11 following news from Indonesia’s Ministry of Energy and Mineral Resources that the country will stop the export of unprocessed laterite ore in 2022.

A sharp increase in global freight rates over the past seven to 10 days has eroded market participants’ manganese ore margins and caused shipments to be postponed, sources told Fastmarkets.

Chinese stainless steelmaker Tsingshan Holding Group has completed construction of its 600,000-tonne-per-year cold-rolling mill in India and is currently putting it through its final stage of testing.

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.