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Rare Earths gloom seems to be lifting – Ecclestone – by Dorothy Kosich (Mineweb.com – February 6, 2014)

http://www.mineweb.com/

While rare earths have behaved more like scorched earth in recent years, Hallgarten’s Christopher Ecclestone suggests, “The nadir of the sector is now past.”

RENO (MINEWEB) – In analysis published Wednesday, Hallgarten & Company’s Christopher Ecclestone suggests, “The storm of the last two years has winnowed the wheat from the chaff (largely) in the REE space.”

“The two bulk producers managed to get into production after a titanic struggle and have been rewarded for their perseverance with relatively lowly market caps,” he noted, adding that the fact Lynas and Molycorp have started churning out light rare earths products “are undermining Chinese dominance in some metals.”

Meanwhile, “Tensions between Japan and China over disputed islands may yet be the touchpaper to set REEs and other specialty metals alight,” he speculated.

Nevertheless, Ecclestone suggested that “the behemoth properties with gargantuan capex budgets have gone the way of the brontosaurus.

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South Africa a Hard Sell at Mining Bash (Reuters/Voice of America – February 5, 2014)

http://www.voanews.com/

CAPE TOWN — South Africa hosts the annual Africa mining conference but the country is a hard sell at its own party.

Outside investors are increasingly wary of South Africa’s mining sector and extra salt is being rubbed into its reputational wound as the conference coincides with a massive strike in its platinum shafts. Foreign flight is a huge concern, not least because the industry needs outside investment to sustain itself.

“Because of the capital-intensive nature of the mining industry and the fact that South Africa doesn’t have sufficient domestic savings, the industry relies heavily on foreign investment,” said Paul Miller, investment banker for mining and metals at Nedbank Capital.

“In order to attract that investment we need to provide a competitive return,” he said. The hardening perception is that the returns in South Africa’s mines are too low and the risks too high. Around 45 percent of the country’s platinum operations are losing money, according to the industry.

Bankers and executives interviewed by Reuters at the conference all said foreign investors uniformly raised a number of concerns about South Africa, starting with labor.

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European Union seeks to stem use of conflict minerals – by Francesco Guarascio (Reuters U.S. – February 5, 2014)

http://www.reuters.com/

BRUSSELS, Feb 5 (Reuters) – The EU’s trade chief will present a voluntary scheme in March aimed at stemming the import of minerals from conflict zones and prevent mining them from financing war and strife, EU officials said on Wednesday.

Karel De Gucht’s proposal to the European Commission, the EU executive, will encompass gold, tungsten, tantalum and tin, in a bid to pressure importers to classify them as coming from areas free of conflict.

“Work is currently underway to prepare a proposal … for a comprehensive EU framework on responsible mineral sourcing in line with international guidelines,” said EU Trade spokesman John Clancy.

The United States defines the conflict mineral zone as the Democratic Republic of Congo and neighboring countries including Angola and South Sudan. They make up 17 percent of the global production of tantalum, 4 percent of the global production of tin, 3 percent of tungsten and 2 percent of gold.

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Friedland calls for ‘responsible’ mining leadership – by Brendan Ryan (Business Day Live – February 5, 2014)

http://www.bdlive.co.za/

MINING entrepreneur Robert Friedland on Wednesday made a plea for “responsible leadership” from mining companies, labour unions and the South African government in resolving the turmoil on the country’s platinum mines.

Addressing the Mining Indaba in Cape Town on Wednesday, Mr Friedland said that while “workers labouring in the deep underground mines certainly deserve better, it is equally important for workers and their leaders to understand that mining companies must make a profit or investors will not inject the billions of dollars needed to find and build profitable mines”.

“So, workers and union leaders need to carefully consider the impact and consequences of their actions. What is required is responsible leadership all around,” he said. Mr Friedland is a flamboyant and legendary personality in the mining industry because of his successes in finding and developing the huge nickel mine at Voisey’s Bay in Canada and the massive Oyu Tolgoi copper mine in Mongolia, now controlled by Rio Tinto.

His latest ventures are being developed through Toronto-listed Ivanhoe Mines and include the Flatreef underground platinum project near Mokopane in Limpopo and the Kamoa copper project in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

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Mitsui Mining Boosts Zinc Fee 70% as China Demand Rises – by Jae Hur and Ichiro Suzuki (Bloomberg News – February 5, 2014)

http://www.bloomberg.com/

Mitsui Mining & Smelting Co. (5706), Japan’s biggest zinc producer, raised annual charges to overseas buyers by as much as 70 percent as consumption increases in China. Futures in London snapped a 10-day losing streak.

The higher fee compares with a 15 percent gain for special high-grade metal last year, said Osamu Saito, a general manager in the Tokyo-based company’s business department. He declined to disclose any dollar values.

Zinc stockpiles monitored by the London Metal Exchange shrank 31 percent since the start of 2013, with inventories in Asia contracting 68 percent. Morgan Stanley forecasts cash prices to average $2,127 a metric ton in 2014, a 10 percent increase on last year as the zinc deficit widens sixfold.

“The market’s been waiting for a turnaround in zinc,” said Gavin Wendt, the founder and senior resource analyst at Sydney-based Mine Life Pty. “There are a lot of people, including myself, that think that 2014 could be the year.”

The metal for delivery in three months in London climbed 0.8 percent to $1,967 a ton at 2:16 p.m.

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Special Report: Areva and Niger’s uranium fight – by Daniel Flynn and Geert de Clercq (Reuters India – February 5, 2014)

http://in.reuters.com/

ARLIT, Niger/PARIS – (Reuters) – When France began mining uranium ore in the desert of northern Niger in the early 1970s, Arlit was a cluster of miners’ huts stranded between the sun-blasted rocks of the Air mountains and the sands of the Sahara.

The 1973 OPEC oil embargo changed that. France embraced nuclear power to free itself from reliance on foreign oil and overnight this remote corner of Africa became crucial to its national interests.

Arlit has grown into a sprawling settlement of 117,000 people, while France now depends on nuclear power for three-quarters of its electricity, making it more reliant on uranium than any country on earth. Niger has become the world’s fourth-largest producer of the ore after Kazakhstan, Canada and Australia.

But uranium has not enriched Niger. The former French colony remains one of the poorest countries on earth. More than 60 percent of its 17 million people survive on less than $1 a day.

Arlit is a dusty and neglected place, scoured by desert sandstorms and barely touched by the mineral wealth it ships off to Europe each year.

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Australia’s Super Pit gold mine gets 8-year lifeline (Reuters U.S. – February 5, 2014)

http://www.reuters.com/

SYDNEY – Feb 5 (Reuters) – Australia’s giant Super Pit gold mine was given an eight-year extension by its operator on Wednesday, delaying its closure until 2029 and allaying concerns weakening bullion prices would lead to an early shutdown.

Actual mining of gold-bearing ore will cease in around five years at what was until recently Australia’s biggest gold mine, though processing of ores already dug up and stockpiled has been extended from 2021 to 2029, according to the operator.

Kalgoorlie Consolidated Gold Mines (KCGM), which operates the Super Pit for 50-50 partners Barrick Gold and Newmont Mining, last year laid off staff as it ran cost reviews in response to falling gold prices.

Australia’s gold mining industry – the world’s second-biggest behind China – has borne the brunt of widespread job losses in mining across the nation as companies attempt to rein in costs.

By moving to process ores containing lower grades of gold, deemed mine reserves, the Super Pit will be able to keep up production for a longer period, according to KCGM.

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Police Disperse Crowd of 3,000 at Amplats Amid Strike Talks – by Paul Burkhardt (Bloomberg News – February 4, 2014)

http://www.bloomberg.com/

South African police fired rubber bullets and water cannon to disperse a 3,000-strong crowd who massed at an Anglo American Platinum Ltd. (AMS) mine in support of a strike that has disrupted the world’s three biggest producers.

Police broke up the crowd at the Khuseleka mine, northwest of Johannesburg, Thulani Ngubane, a spokesman for the South African Police Service in the North West province, said by phone today. Two people were arrested.

The group had “the intention of not letting any mineworker go to work and we tried to resolve it amicably and we had to resort to minimum force,” Ngubane said.

Talks resumed in Pretoria aimed at resolving the dispute between producers and the Association of Mineworkers and Construction Union, which has been on strike over pay since Jan. 23. The union has more than 70,000 members on strike at Anglo American Platinum, Impala Platinum Holdings Ltd. (IMP) and Lonmin Plc (LON), which run the largest mines in a country accounting for about 70 percent of global output of the precious metal.

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NEWSMAKER-Indonesian minister tried but couldn’t block his own law – by Wilda Asmarini and Kanupriya Kapoor (Reuters India – February 4, 2014)

http://in.reuters.com/

Feb 4 (Reuters) – Indonesia’s mines minister, Jero Wacik, has been on an unusual mission in recent months: finding a way out of implementing his own government’s policy.

A smiling, well-rehearsed politician, Wacik was earlier tourism minister, pushing the charms of his native Bali island and other Indonesian attractions. In 2011, he was given the role of supervising the country’s $6 billion-a-year mining sector despite having no experience of the industry.

At the time, part of his job was to enforce a law President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono had pushed through, a bold ultimatum to the mining industry: process your ores in Indonesia by 2014 or stop exporting.

But around the middle of last year, the government came to the conclusion that a ban on the export of ore would hurt the economy and lead to job losses that would be damaging in the 2014 election year. Wacik tried postponing the law, but parliament, already tired of the administration’s ambiguities, wouldn’t play ball. He then tried to water it down, but was not successful.

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Low-cost production key for gold – by Barry Fitzgerald (The Australian – February 4, 2014)

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/business

IT stands to reason that in the mining world, the best defence against commodity price weakness is to be the lowest-cost producer. That goes doubly for the gold sector after last year’s price collapse.All that has panned out for those investors who responded to the massive shakedown in the gold price and equity values last year for gold producers not by fleeing altogether, but by seeking safe harbour in the lowest-cost producers.

They have been doing very nicely, thank you very much. Australia’s lowest-cost (listed) gold producer, Doray Minerals (DRM), is a case in point. Its cash costs are the lowest in the local industry if Newcrest’s Cadia operation, which gets the benefit of a copper credit, is ignored.

It’s hard to believe now but Doray got as low as 35c a share last July when the shakedown for gold stocks was in full swing. Realistically, some of that weakness was due to the fact that the group’s new Andy Well operation, north of Meekatharra in Western Australia, had yet to pour its first gold, meaning it had yet to prove itself.

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Indonesian govt must offer incentives to build smelters-PT Indosmelt – by Michael Taylor and Wilda Asmarini (Reuters India – February 4, 2014)

http://in.reuters.com/

JAKARTA, Feb 4 (Reuters) – Indonesia’s government must provide tax holidays and other financial incentives to convince companies to invest hundreds of millions of dollars to build copper smelters amid weak global prices, said the head of smelting firm PT Indosmelt.

President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono last month imposed new mining policies, including a controversial mineral ore export ban and progressive export taxes, aimed at forcing miners to build smelters and process their raw materials in Indonesia.

The policies have forced U.S. miners Freeport-McMoRan Copper & Gold and Newmont Mining Corp, which together produce 97 percent of Indonesia’s copper, to halt all exports. The two firms have yet to commit to building smelters, saying it was not economically viable to make such large investments.

“The margins for smelters are small, very small,” Natsir Mansyur, president director of privately owned and unlisted PT Indosmelt told Reuters. “There must be incentives from the government. To build (a smelter), this business should be protected by the government.”

In mid-2012, government officials said they planned to offer financial incentives to help firms build smelters to comply with the new mining regulations, although the details have yet to be announced and talks are still ongoing.

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Andrew Forrest takes fight to Nintendo – by John Daffe (Herald Sun – February 4, 2014)

http://www.heraldsun.com.au/

IT’S the battle that pits one of Australia’s richest men against one of the world’s biggest video game makers. And it’s game on.

Mining billionaire and philanthropist Andrew Forrest has set his sights on Nintendo, hoping to force the Japanese giant to beef up measures ensuring its products contain no “conflict minerals”.

The name refers to minerals – commonly tin, tantalum, tungsten, and gold – that are heavily mined in and around the Democratic Republic of Congo using forced labour, debt bondage and child slavery.

Walk Free, the anti-slavery group founded by Mr Forrest, is stepping up its campaign against Nintendo, which it says is yet to take concrete steps to guarantee that the microprocessors powering its consoles are free from the minerals.

The group started an email campaign encouraging people to quiz Nintendo chiefs about their conflict minerals policy last year. It has launched a new push after last month’s decision by Intel, the world’s largest semiconductor chip maker, to guarantee its microprocessors are conflict mineral free.

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Base metals in a post super-cycle world – Lennon – by Geoff Canday (Mineweb.com – February 4, 2014)

http://www.mineweb.com/

Jim Lennon discusses why demographics alone aren’t enough to recreate the massive type of growth in China that led to the super cycle.

CAPE TOWN (MINEWEB) – GEOFF CANDY: Hello and welcome to this Mineweb.com Newsmaker podcast, my name is Geoff Candy and joining me here live at the Cape Town International Convention Centre for the 2014 Mining Indaba is Jim Lennon, he’s the managing director at Red Door Research.

Jim, you’ve just done a presentation, the key note, about where we’re headed from a metals point of view, where the super-cycle is or if it’s going to come back, just generally speaking, the lay of the land. One of the things that struck from that is that it does seem to be moving very much from a demand-driven story to what’ s going to happening with supply over the next ten, 15, 20 years, is that a correct reading of things?

JIM LENNON: Partly, I think first China will continue to be a dominant factor on the demand side, the rates of growth in China were high double digit for the last ten years, we’re now seeing that slow down, so necessarily the growth rates are slowing. However, the volume required as a result of that slow growth because you’re working off the high base is still very, very high.

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Cuba to cut nickel plant output for major overhaul (Reuters U.S. – February 3, 2014)

http://www.reuters.com/

Feb 3 (Reuters) – Cuba will reduce production at one of its two nickel plants this year so it can carry out maintenance and capital improvements to make the plant competitive at low international prices.

A report on the evening government newscast on Sunday said the Ernesto Che Guevara processing facility in eastern Holguin province would be given a major overhaul.

The state-owned plant, built with Soviet technology and opened in 1986, has a capacity of about 30,000 tonnes of unrefined nickel plus cobalt a year at a cost of more than $12,000 a tonne.

Spot nickel prices on the London Metals Exchange opened at $13,695 a tonne on Monday. The broadcast quoted the plant’s head of maintenance as saying it would be the biggest overhaul in the plant’s 28-year history and that workers face the challenge of producing 14,700 tonnes of unrefined nickel plus cobalt while it is taking place.

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Tighter South African emission laws boost platinum ‘beneficiation’ – by Martin Creamer (MiningWeekly.com – February 3, 2014)

http://www.miningweekly.com/page/americas-home

CAPE TOWN (miningweekly.com) –Tighter vehicle emission legislation in South Africa would boost the struggling platinum mining industry and be a fantastic local beneficiation route for the metal, which is facing an uphill battle, SFA Oxford MD Beresford Clarke said on Monday.

Beresford, who was addressing the Investing In African Mining Indaba on Monday, said that South Africa was becoming less competitive in the platinum market and the next three years would be tough for platinum.

The recycling of platinum autocatalysts and platinum jewellery had risen to two-million ounces a year, four times higher than in 2000, and was tantamount to Lonmin-sized output being incrementally added every five years.

Palladium-rich Russian and North America were outdoing platinum-and-rhodium dominant South Africa, with both countries producing at lower cash costs and higher by-product credits than South Africa.

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