The European Commission has made a number of changes to its existing regime of safeguard measures concerning 26 steel product categories, it said on Thursday September 26. At the same time, the appointment of a European chief trade enforcement officer was welcomed by the steel and aluminium industries, with industry experts noting at a meeting of the European Parliament Committee on International Trade in Brussels that it should help ease trade problems in the sectors and help tackle Chinese excess capacity.
Weak fundamentals in global downstream aluminium-product premiums were a key concern among market participants further up the supply chain, they said during Fastmarkets’ International Aluminium conference in Athens, Greece, on September 23-25.
The Chinese ammonium paratungstate price shot up by 9.7% week on week on September 25 due to improved market sentiment and a tighter upstream concentrate supply.
Global supplies of silico-manganese rose by 21% year on year in August, to 1.63 million tonnes, according to the latest data from the International Manganese Institute.
The benchmark alumina price in the Pacific region has fallen below $290 per tonne for the first time since May 25, 2017.