IN CASE YOU MISSED IT: 5 key stories from June 20

Here are five Fastmarkets MB stories you might have missed on Thursday June 20 that are worth another look.

The London Metal Exchange has just finished its trial to calculate nickel prices using a volume-weighted average price method on the exchange’s electronic trading platform.

China will only permit 240,429 tonnes of copper scrap imports in the entire third quarter of 2019, sending panic across the local scrap industry, according to an official list of Chinese importers granted import quotas, seen by Fastmarkets on Thursday June 20.

Metals trader Trafigura has refuted claims from Iceberg Research, the analytics outfit that launched an explosive campaign against Noble Group, that it has overvalued “hundreds of millions [of dollars] in debt securities issued by an associate.”

United States-based iron ore producer Cleveland-Cliffs is prepared to export part of its iron ore output in the event that more furnaces are shut down in the country, its chairman and chief executive officer Lourenço Gonçalves said on Wednesday. 
 
Pilbara Minerals will restrict its lithium production in June and July due to reduced demand in the second quarter of 2019 caused by delays in the commissioning of chemical conversion capacity by the company’s key offtake partners in China.

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Aluminium demand in India is set to continue its sharp growth over the next three years, fueled by an expanding automotive sector in the South Asian country, Fastmarkets heard at the Material Recycling Association of India (MRAI) international conference held in Jaipur on January 28-30.
After a consultation period, Fastmarkets is increasing the publication frequency of two copper concentrates index coefficients — MB-CU-0422 copper concentrates counterparty spread and MB-CU-0423 copper concentrates Co-VIU — from monthly to fortnightly.
Over a decade since its first attempt, Glencore appears to have taken another tilt at Rio Tinto.
Participants in the market for copper scrap and blister in China, the world’s largest importer of copper raw materials, expect there to be fiercer competition for material in 2025, industry sources told Fastmarkets in the week to Thursday January 9.