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Zinc, Lead and Tin

Glencore to spend $956M to increase stake in Peru’s largest zinc producer – by Cecilia Jamasmie (Mining.com – October 2, 2017)

http://www.mining.com/

Miner and commodities trader Glencore (LON:GLEN) is buying 26.73% of the voting shares in Peru’s largest zinc producer, Volcan Compañía Minera SAA, in a deal worth at least $531 million.

The Swiss company will pay $1.215 per class A common share, which will help it boost its current 7.68% interest in Volcan and which could cost Glencore as much as $956 million, depending on the level of acceptances.

“Volcan’s operations are located in the richest polymetallic production area in Peru, producing some of the highest quality zinc concentrates,” it said in the statement.

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COLUMN-Zinc spreads explode as tightness bites London shorts – by Andy Home (Reuters U.K. – September 26, 2017)

http://uk.reuters.com/

LONDON, Sept 26 (Reuters) – Zinc bulls have been waiting a long time for this, but the slow-burning supply crunch has at last travelled all the way down the supply chain to bite holders of short positions on the London Metal Exchange (LME). LME time spreads exploded last week and they’ve grown wilder still this week.

The benchmark cash to three-month spread CMZN0-3 closed on Monday at a backwardation of $66 a tonne. That’s the widest cash premium since January 2007. Contraction of the forward curve reflects acute tightness on the cash date itself as evidenced by continuing turbulence within even the shortest-dated of LME spreads.

With exchange stocks falling and more metal being cancelled before physical load-out, those who have taken short positions look set for a torrid time. However, this sort of extreme tightness on the LME could yet prove a double-edged sword for bulls if it sucks “hidden” metal out of off-market storage.

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Rally in zinc price raises spectre of substitution – by Eric Onstad (Reuters U.S. – September 19, 2017)

https://www.reuters.com/

LONDON, Sept 19 (Reuters) – A sharp rally in zinc prices is posing the threat that industrial users will find ways to substitute the metal with cheaper alternatives or use less, curbing overall consumption.

High prices may also dampen a nascent move by Chinese automakers to use more zinc for galvanising, while the Western car sector could employ thinner coats of zinc alloys to help meet tough emission rules by cutting vehicle weight.

“We expect zinc prices to carry on going up for at least another 12 months, so I think there’s clearly a growing risk of demand destruction in some shape or form,” said analyst Andrew Thomas at consultancy Wood Mackenzie. Benchmark zinc on the London Metal Exchange has doubled since January last year, hitting a peak of $3,231.75 a tonne in late August, the highest in a decade.

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Teck ups Red Dog guidance; outlines significant exploration target for Aktigiruq – by Henry Lazenby (MiningWeekly.com – September 19, 2017)

http://www.miningweekly.com/

VANCOUVER (miningweekly.com) – Canada’s largest diversified miner Teck Resources has added about 50 000 t of zinc output to the full-year guidance for its Red Dog mine, in Alaska.

Vancouver-headquartered Teck advised that improving recoveries in the last few months has prompted the company to lift guidance to a range of 525 000 t to 550 000 t of zinc, up from the most recent guidance range of 475 000 t to 500 000 t of zinc.

The company increased production because of changes in mine sequencing and improved metallurgical recoveries, enabling higher-grade mill feed with a greater percentage of ore from the Qanaiyaq pit in the second half of the year. Meanwhile, Teck expects yearly zinc output at Red Dog over the next five years to range between 475 000 t and 550 000 t of zinc.

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Long-awaited N.W.T. mining road through national park gets thumbs up from review board (CBC News North – September 14, 2017)

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/north/

The much-anticipated all-season road to Canadian Zinc’s Prairie Creek mine passed its environmental assessment this week, more than five years after the Prairie Creek mine was approved in the heart of Nahanni National Park Reserve.

The Mackenzie Valley Review Board announced Tuesday it is recommending the project to the Minister of Crown-Indigenous Relations and Northern Affairs for conditional approval. This week’s green light marks the end of a process that lasted more than three years. The nearby Nahanni Butte Dene Band grew impatient, and began construction on their own road to the mine.

However, the board’s support is contingent on the implementation of 16 measures it says will prevent “significant adverse impacts on the environment.” Among those measures: a road adapted for permafrost conditions, along with ongoing permafrost monitoring; wildlife monitoring that incorporates traditional knowledge; and the creation of an independent technical panel to ensure the road’s design protects people and the environment.

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Ivanhoe plans ‘new era of production’ for historic DRC mine – by Natasha Odendaal (MiningWeekly.com – September 6, 2017)

http://www.miningweekly.com/

JOHANNESBURG (miningweekly.com) – TSX-listed Ivanhoe Mines has entered into discussions to start a “new era of production” at the historic Kipushi zinc-copper-silver-germanium mine, in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), that could deliver one of the highest-grade major zinc mines worldwide.

Ivanhoe, which, in conjunction with its 32% joint venture (JV) partner State-owned miner Gécamines, recently upgraded Kipushi, is now planning to restore production, with the JV, the Kipushi Corporation, focusing initial mining on the Big Zinc deposit.

Negotiations are under way with Gécamines and DRC’s national railway company Société Nationale des Chemins de Fer du Congo (SNCC), along with potential project financiers, to advance agreements to launch the new era of commercial production, said Ivanhoe executive chairperson Robert Friedland.

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Zinc on a bullish tear but just how high can it go? – by Andy Home (Reuters U.S. – August 21, 2017)

https://www.reuters.com/

LONDON (Reuters) – Zinc on Monday morning hit a fresh decade high of $3,180.50 per tonne on the London Metal Exchange (LME). Zinc bulls have been waiting a long, long time for this moment. A slow-fuse narrative of a looming supply crunch has been simmering for years but has finally burst into explosive price action.

True, London zinc has been given a helping hand from Shanghai, where speculative froth seems to have spilled over from the iron ore and steel markets to the base metals complex.

And also true, a supply-side response to high zinc prices is already starting to build with old mines such as Thalanga in Australia being brought back out of mothballs and speculation mounting as to how long Swiss producer and trader Glencore will wait before reversing the production cuts it announced in 2015.

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Four warning signs that Teck’s spectacular gains are over – by David Berman (Globe and Mail – August 18, 2017)

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/

Teck Resources Ltd. rewards nimble investors who can move against the current, selling the stock when times are good and buying it when the outlook is dismal. Today, conditions are excellent for the Vancouver-based miner, and that suggests shareholders should consider departing from this roller coaster of an investment.

On the surface, this might not sound like a great idea, given Teck’s stellar second-quarter results, released late last month. Teck, which produces copper, zinc and steelmaking coal from mines in Canada, the United States, Chile and Peru, topped analysts’ estimates with a profit of $577-million or $1 a share – way up from a profit of just 3 cents a share a year ago.

Analysts had been expecting a profit of 90 cents a share, according to Reuters. The company’s debt levels are also falling, which is good. Net debt per share declined to $9.59, according to a report from Canaccord Genuity, down from $13.42 a share last year, which is a steeper drop than analysts had been expecting.

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Zinc Breaks Through $3,000 Barrier as Metals Rally Gathers Pace (Bloomberg News – August 16, 2017)

https://www.bloomberg.com/

Zinc surged above $3,000 a metric ton for the first time in almost a decade while aluminum approached a three-year high, adding momentum to a metals rally fueled by bets on tightening supplies and robust demand.

Zinc jumped as much as 5.8 percent to $3,132.50 a ton on the London Metal Exchange, the highest since 2007, before settling at $3,119 at 5:51 p.m. in London. Aluminum rose as much as 2.7 percent to the highest since September 2014, while nickel, copper and lead also advanced. The rally boosted mining shares, with Freeport-McMoRan Inc. among the biggest gainers.

An index of base metals has climbed to a more-than two-year high amid better-than-expected demand in China and a weakening dollar. The Asian nation is stepping up efforts to shut illegal aluminum and steel plants to cut emissions and excess capacity.

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COLUMN-Lead gets unforeseen boost from North Korean sanctions – by Andy Home (Reuters U.K. – August 17, 2017)

http://uk.reuters.com/

LONDON, Aug 17 (Reuters) – Lead has been an unlikely and unforeseen beneficiary of the North Korea missile crisis. A new round of U.N. sanctions includes North Korean exports of lead concentrate. China, which signed up to the U.S.-drafted resolution, will lose an increasingly significant flow of raw materials to its lead smelters.

The news has reinvigorated a market that had lost its bull narrative thread. London Metal Exchange (LME) lead for three-months delivery hit a nine-month high of $2,537 per tonne on Thursday morning.

Not as exciting as zinc, which has just surged to its highest level in over a decade. But being overshadowed by its more glamorous sister metal is nothing new for lead. Characterised by a lack of statistical clarity and only sporadic news flow, lead tends to get regularly punished on the London market in the form of the popular relative value trade against zinc.

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Artists, hippies, miners — Patagonia divided over hamlet’s economic future – by Lucas Waldron (Arizona Daily Star – August 13, 2017)

http://tucson.com/

Patagonia has one bar, one coffee shop, one gas station. And customers at nearly all of them are divided between those in favor of a new mining project in this tiny southeastern-Arizona town and those against it.

Roughly half of Patagonia’s 900 residents support Arizona Mining Inc., a Canadian company that recently bought land near town for exploratory drilling. The rest oppose the mining company, seeking to preserve the region’s unique rare wildlife and steer the economy away from mineral extraction and toward environmental restoration.

Arizona Mining Inc. has vowed to create an estimated 500 jobs through a mine it plans to have up and running in 2020. In July, the company predicted the mine will extract 10,000 tons of minerals per day and could be viable for eight years.

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As 777 winds down, Hudbay looks to Lalor – by D’Arcy Jenish (Canadian Mining Journal – June 2017)

http://www.canadianminingjournal.com/

For nearly a century – 90 years in December, to be precise – Hudbay Minerals has been the cornerstone and lifeblood of the northern Manitoba community of Flin Flon. But change is coming to this quintessential one-industry, resource-based Canadian town. In 2020, Hudbay is scheduled to close the 777 mine – its only remaining mining operation in the immediate vicinity of Flin Flon.

Meantime, the company is continuing to develop and expand its base and precious metal Lalor mine, which began producing in late 2014 and is located in Snow Lake, 215 km east of Flin Flon. “We have undertaken a program of re-evaluating exploration opportunities with the Flin Flon area,” says Cashel Meagher, Hudbay’s senior vice-president and chief operating officer. “The obvious future in northern Manitoba will divert from Flin Flon to Lalor. We want to perpetuate the life of the Lalor mine.”

In fact, the potential at Lalor has continued to increase since Hudbay launched an aggressive exploration program in 2007. The company drilled 180 holes from surface and identified a sizeable deposit of ore-grade material – zinc on top, copper beneath it and a halo of contact gold beneath the copper.

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Glencore turns bigger copper, zinc price bull: Nickel not so much – by Frik Els (Mining.com – August 10, 2017)

http://www.mining.com/

Miner and commodities trader Glencore (LON:GLEN) raised its revenue and profit outlook for the year on Thursday with the Swiss company citing the fast-growing electric vehicle market as a key driver.

“Most automotive players are now accelerating investment in/adoption of electric vehicle technologies, reflecting, in part, increasingly aggressive Government mandates around emission targets.

Growth in electric vehicle/energy storage systems requires changes in material flows, including the installation, rebuild and replacement of supporting infrastructure. Based on current and emerging technologies, these changes should benefit enabling commodities such as copper, cobalt and nickel,” Glencore said in a statement accompanying its half-year results.

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Sprott Conference: Friedland pitches metals used in electric vehicles – by Lesley Stokes (Northern Miner – August 8, 2017)

http://www.northernminer.com/

VANCOUVER — The electric car revolution is accelerating, and so will the demand for metals that make them work, Robert Friedland, executive chairman of Ivanhoe Mines (TSX: IVN; US-OTC: IVPAF) said during a presentation at the Sprott Natural Resource Symposium in Vancouver in late July.

In what has become a recurring topic in his presentations, Friedland stated that continued rapid urbanization, combined with efforts to fight air pollution, will lead to the ramping up of electric vehicle production. And the demand for the metals needed to build them — including copper, platinum, palladium, zinc, nickel and cobalt — will rise as a result.

“This is an era of unprecedented change, it’s really happening,” Friedland said. “The handwriting is on the wall. For those of you who deny this phenomenon, you’re going to miss this massive disruption opening soon at a theatre near you.”

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Spongy zinc battery may beat lithium-ion on safety, price, recycling – by James Dunn (North Bay Business Journal – July 24, 2017)

http://www.northbaybusinessjournal.com/

If nearly 500,000 deposits of $1,000 each on the new Tesla Model 3 indicate bridled demand, the electric cars have a sure future. Tesla plans to start delivery of the $35,000 vehicles on July 28, when it will release the first 30. Palo Alto-based Tesla aims to crank out about three cars a day in August, boost output to 1,500 in September and build to a rate of 20,000 a month by the end of 2017.

Tesla electric cars rely on lithium-ion batteries. The company is building a gargantuan battery factory in Nevada — some 5.8 million square feet — slated for completion in 2020. The enormous production capacity could drive down battery costs by about 30 percent, Tesla said, from batteries now produced by Panasonic in Japan.

But a Marin-based aerospace engineer sees problems with lithium-ion technology: potential for explosions as occurred in Samsung phones in 2016; high cost; and poor recyclability. He suggests zinc, the metal used to stop corrosion in galvanized steel, as an alternative.

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