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Manganese alloys continue to trend downward despite increased buying driven by the lower prices, traders said.
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Molybdenum prices have been driven up recently by a small rush of consumers entering the market for January delivery.
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Alcoa Inc. and the Bonneville Power Administration (BPA) have finalized a power agreement for the company’s Intalco smelter in Ferndale, Wash., allowing the 279,000-tonne-per-year smelter to remain open, albeit at less than full operational capacity.
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Tribal leaders in Indonesia’s Papua province have threatened to blockade Freeport-McMoRan Copper & Gold Inc.’s Grasberg Mine after police killed a separatist leader, according to a Reuters report.
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Players in the North American aluminum industry had hoped that a binding agreement out of Copenhagen would give them an indication of what to expect on the domestic climate-change policy front, but no such luck.
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Molibdenos y Metales SA (Molymet) expects to complete a deal to acquire 50 percent of China’s Luoyang High-Tech Molybdenum & Tungsten Material (Luomo High-Tech) by April.
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The Russian government will reinstate a 5-percent tax on nickel exports next month, a year after suspending export duties due to nickel prices falling below $10,000 per tonne, the newspaper Rossiyskaya Gazeta reported Monday.
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Tribal leaders in Indonesia’s Papua province have threatened to blockade Freeport-McMoRan Copper & Gold Inc.’s Grasberg Mine after police killed a separatist leader, according to a Reuters report.
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Bahrain’s state-owned Aluminium Bahrain BSC (Alba) has accused Japanese trading firm Sojitz Group of paying about $15 million in bribes to gain an unfair and anti-competitive advantage in the U.S. aluminum market, according to a civil suit filed in Houston.
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Norsk Hydro ASA has commissioned its 585,000-tonne-per-year Qatalum greenfield aluminum smelter in Qatar on time and on budget.
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Rio Tinto Alcan is considering building a primary aluminum smelter in Paraguay with an initial capacity of 485,000 tonnes per year.
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Bahrain’s state-owned Aluminium Bahrain BSC (Alba) has accused Japanese trading house Sojitz Group of paying about $15 million in bribes to gain an unfair and anti-competitive advantage in the U.S. aluminum market, according to a civil suit filed in Houston.
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Chinese refined copper imports are again profitable in China after the London Metal Exchange cash price fell late last week. “Based on LME cash at $6,900.50 per tonne and a premium at $65 per tonne, the latest import cost is around 55,662 yuan ($8,138) per tonne, lower than Shanghai spot prices,” said an analyst at Wanxiang Resources Co., China’s top trading house. The calculations include freight and other costs of shipping material. “Now you can earn a profit of about 150 yuan ($22) per tonne” on imported copper, he added. Spot copper traded on the Shanghai Changjiang Nonferrous Metals Market was quoted at 55,700 to 55,850 yuan ($8,156 to $8,178) per tonne. The arbitrage could boost international prices as Chinese buyers purchase LME copper and sell basis Shanghai, a Chinese trader said.
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Sapa Holding AB plans to upgrade equipment at its City of Industry, Calif., facility by replacing a 7-inch extrusion press with a larger, more efficient 8-inch press. The new 2,350-ton Ube press will come from the idled Watsonville, Calif., plant, which Sapa acquired in August when it completed the purchase of the assets of bankrupt aluminum extruder Indalex Holdings Finance Inc. Sapa, a subsidiary of Norway’s Orkla ASA, said start-up of the newly relocated press is planned for the second quarter of 2010. The upgrade, which is expected to cost more than $1.5 million, signals Sapa’s long-term commitment to ongoing capital investment, the company said.
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Workers at Xstrata Copper’s Altonorte operations in Chile voted to strike after rejecting the company’s latest wage offer. A majority of the 274 workers from union No. 1 at the copper and molybdenum smelter rejected the company’s offer to increase wages by up to 3 percent, plus bonus and benefits, union president Abdiel Sepúlveda said. “We asked 2.5 percent, 5 percent and 10 percent (depending on salary levels), plus higher bonus and benefits,” he said. Xstrata will now ask government to mediate the collective contract review, a process which will last for five working days. If Altonorte fails to obtain approval for mediated talks, workers will start an indefinite strike on Sunday night or Monday morning, Sepúlveda said, adding that their collective contract expires on Friday. Xstrata Copper said in a statement that the 274 workers represent around 40 percent of Altonorte’s work force, but Sepúlveda said that they represent more than 80 percent of the staff responsible for production. Altonorte produced 232,000 tonnes of copper anodes last year.
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Tianjin Magnesium International Co. Ltd. (TMI) will appeal an anti-dumping duty on the grounds that the U.S. Commerce Department improperly applied a punitive rate, according to lawyers for the company.
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Zinc spot business is sluggish as the market is in the midst of its traditional mid-December slowdown, but market participants said many consumers are still busy negotiating long-term contract premiums.
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The Italian government has offered to continue to subsidize energy prices at Alcoa Inc.’s Italian smelters at Portovesme and Fusina for the next six months in a bid to stave off closure and in the hope that a long-term solution would be found by then, according to an official at metalworkers union Federazione Impiegati Operai Metallurgici (FIOM).
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Tianjin Magnesium International Co. Ltd. (TMI) will appeal an anti-dumping duty on the grounds that the U.S. Commerce Department improperly applied a punitive rate, according to lawyers for the company.
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Sapa Holding AB plans to upgrade equipment at its City of Industry, Calif., facility by replacing a 7-inch extrusion press with a larger, more efficient 8-inch press.
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Zinc spot business is sluggish as the market is in the midst of its traditional mid-December slowdown, but market participants said many consumers are still busy negotiating long-term contract premiums.
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Cobalt prices rose Wednesday as buyers paid slightly higher numbers to obtain metal, and market participants said there was some nearby tightness in the United States.
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The 2010 first-quarter charge chrome contract price between South African producers and European steelmakers has settled at $1.01 per pound, 2 cents below this year’s fourth-quarter price of $1.03 per pound, market participants said.
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The global zinc surplus widened in the first 10 months of this year and the lead market swung to a surplus in the same period, according to the International Lead and Zinc Study Group (ILZSG).