IN CASE YOU MISSED IT: 5 key stories from September 17

Here are five Fastmarkets MB stories you might have missed on Tuesday September 17 that are worth another look.

Fastmarkets looks at the key takeaways from the seventh Fastmarkets Asian Nickel conference in Jakarta, Indonesia, on September 11-12, from who will fill the Asian supply gap from 2020 to emerging demand for nickel from the electric vehicle battery sector.

Import prices for steel slab in Southeast Asia and East Asia continued to decline over the past week because of weakness in the downstream flat steel markets caused by sluggish demand and lower prices, market sources said.

The European ferro-vanadium market continued its downtrend last week amid thin spot buying and prevailing bearish sentiment.

Rising oil prices driven by shutdowns in Saudi Arabia have had a negative effect on outright copper prices, analysts told Fastmarkets on Tuesday September 17.

Low-grade manganese ore cif prices fell over the past week, with some buyers holding back from purchasing in the hope of lower prices.

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.