IN CASE YOU MISSED IT: 5 key stories from July 30

Here are five Fastmarkets MB stories you might have missed on Tuesday July 30 that are worth another look.

Charge chrome prices have held at a 25-month low throughout July, highlighting the challenges South African producers are facing with rising production costs.

A slump in global automotive sales in the first half of the year continues to put pressure on tungsten prices, with ammonium paratungstate and ferro-tungsten prices in Europe now falling to their lowest levels since 2017.

Intense buying from Chinese speculators and foreign traders over the past two weeks is unlikely to cause China’s cobalt metal market to slip into a significant supply deficit in the near term, market participants told Fastmarkets.

The accelerated ramp-up of the new Cobre Panama copper mine in the central American country has brought the start of its commercial production forward by several months to before the end of the third quarter, according to owner First Quantum Minerals.

Seaborne iron ore prices rose on Tuesday July 30 on news that production restrictions on steelmakers in northern China over August are likely to be relaxed.

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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.