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Zinc, Lead and Tin

Zinc deficit looms, prices up, but output restarts unlikely – by Pratima Desai (Reuters U.K. – August 16, 2016)

http://uk.reuters.com/

LONDON, Aug 16 Zinc’s sharp rally and looming market deficit has fed speculation that major producers such as Glencore may reverse output cuts, but analysts caution that is unlikely to happen soon.

Only when stocks of concentrate and metal sink to levels where higher prices can be sustained will large producers look at restarting capacity, they say. Benchmark zinc on the London Metal Exchange has climbed nearly 60 percent from January’s multi-year lows to around $2,300 a tonne, its highest since May 2015.

Many zinc mines have been shut or mothballed over the past couple of years, but prices did not really take off until this year when deficit expectations intensified with the closure of the Century mine in Australia and Lisheen in Ireland.

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Mining News: Soaring zinc prices? – by Shane Lasley (North of 60: Mining News – August 14, 2016)

http://www.petroleumnews.com/

Shrinking supplies seems to overcome gravity of slowing base metals demand

Caught between an updraft caused by dwindling supply and the gravity of slowing growth in global demand, zinc prices seem to have reached a cruising altitude above US$1 per pound.

Recent closures of two large zinc mines – Century in Australia and Lisheen in Ireland – wiped out more than 600,000 metric tons of the world’s annual supply of the galvanizing metal.

Analysts expected these looming supply deficits to send zinc prices soaring well above US$1/lb. in 2015. While the metal did climb to US$1.10/lb. in May, lackluster global economic growth muting the demand for commodities in general instead dragged the price to seven-year lows.

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Zinc starts to bubble as investors pile in (again) – by Andy Home (Reuters U.S. – July 20, 2016)

http://www.reuters.com/

LONDON – Zinc is this year’s investment pick of the base metals traded on the London Metal Exchange (LME). The price of LME zinc for three-months delivery has risen by 42 percent since the start of January to a current $2,235 per tonne.

It is by a wide margin the strongest year-to-date performance among the LME pack and prices are now back at levels last seen in May last year. Also rising at a fast clip, though, is speculative interest on both the London and Shanghai markets.

Market open interest on the Shanghai Futures Exchange (ShFE) is surging, while speculative length in the LME is rapidly approaching those May 2015 peaks.

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Metals rebound restores some luster to lowly zinc and nickel – by Peter Koven(Financial Post – July 15, 2016)

http://business.financialpost.com/

After many months in the gutter, two of the world’s least-loved metals are enjoying an honest-to-goodness turnaround.

Zinc and nickel are both soaring this summer after recovering from shocking depths early in the year. Zinc touched US$1.00 a pound on Thursday for the first time since mid-2015, while nickel jumped to a nine-month high of US$4.73 a pound. Zinc is up 48 per cent from its January low, and nickel is up 38 per cent in the same period.

These moves were a long time coming. For the past two years, experts have been warning of major supply-side problems in these markets and predicting that rallies were inevitable. It took a while for them to materialize, in part because of high inventories. And now that they are finally here, there is debate about whether they are sustainable.

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Glencore must face U.S. lawsuit over zinc prices – by Jonathan Stempel (Reuters U.S. – June 6, 2016)

http://www.reuters.com/

NEW YORK – A U.S. judge said on Monday two units of Anglo-Swiss mining company Glencore Plc must face a private antitrust lawsuit accusing them of trying to monopolize the market for special high grade zinc, driving up its price.

U.S. District Judge Katherine Forrest in Manhattan said zinc purchasers alleged “a plausible story of market control” by the Glencore units, Glencore Ltd and Pacorini Metals USA Inc, that violated the Sherman Act, a U.S. antitrust law.

In a 62-page decision, the judge also dismissed the purchasers’ claim that Glencore’s 2010 purchase of Pacorini was an illegal merger because its effect was to reduce competition.

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Goldman’s ‘Bullish Exception’ Powers Ahead as Zinc Tops $2,000 – by Agnieszka De Sousa and Martin Ritchie (Bloomberg News – June 2, 2016)

http://www.bloomberg.com/

Zinc extended its rally to a 10-month high amid expectations for a global shortage of one of this year’s best-performing commodities. Shares of companies producing the metal rose.

Zinc, used for rustproofing steel in everything from auto bodies to suspension bridges, has surged 23 percent in 2016, outperforming other base metals. Banks from Goldman Sachs Group Inc. to Macquarie Group Ltd. see further gains for prices that have risen for six straight days.

Glencore Plc and Nyrstar, Europe’s top refined metal producer, curbed output from mines last year after prices plunged amid the worst rout since the global financial crisis in 2008. Operations such as Vedanta’s Lisheen in Ireland and MMG Ltd.’s Century in Australia have also closed. Goldman last month dubbed zinc the “bullish exception” among metals, highlighting its positive prospects in contrast to the outlook for copper and aluminum.

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Australian micro miner says finds big zinc lode (Reuters U.S. – June 1, 2016)

http://www.reuters.com/

Australian penny stock Rox Resources, backed by mining major Teck Resources of Canada, said it has discovered one of the world’s largest zinc deposits in northern Australia, although any decision to mine is years away.

The discovery comes seven months after Chinese conglomerate MMG Ltd shut the nearby exhausted Century zinc mine, once the world’s third-biggest, leaving a hole in global supplies of the metal chiefly used to galvanise steel.

The lode, named Teena, holds 14.2 billion pounds of zinc, as well as 2.1 billion pounds of lead, making it around the same size as the Century deposit. Teena is located eight kms (5 miles) from the Glencore -owned McArthur River zinc mine.

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[Water contamination with lead] The lead wait – by Omar El Akkad (Globe and Mail – May 4, 2016)

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/

What surprised Elyse Pivnick weren’t the details, even though they were grim: Flint, Mich., a town of 100,000, had been poisoned, its children made sick by levels of lead in the drinking water so high, they exceed the government’s definition of hazardous waste.

But as she watched the eyes of the nation turn to Michigan last year, Ms. Pivnick, an environmental health expert who has spent 12 years working on lead-poisoning prevention, realized something else. Shortly before the Flint scandal became public, Ms. Pivnick had worked on a study of lead poisoning in New Jersey. In 11 cities in that state, there was a higher percentage of children affected by lead than in Flint.

“This is not to take a thing away from the debacle in Flint,” says Ms. Pivnick, who is the director of environmental health at Isles, a community development organization, “but it is to say that this is a very old problem.”

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Teck Resources Posts Surprise Adjusted Profit as Costs Fall – by Danielle Bochove and Liezel Hill (Bloomberg News – April 26, 2016)

http://www.bloomberg.com/

Teck Resources Ltd. reported first-quarter results that beat analysts’ estimates as Canada’s largest diversified miner cut costs to offset the impact of lower commodity prices.

Profit attributable to shareholders was C$94 million ($74 million) compared with C$68 million a year earlier, the Vancouver-based company said Tuesday in a statement. Excluding one-time items, Teck posted earnings of 3 Canadian cents a share, beating the 3-cent loss estimated by 19 analysts tracked by Bloomberg.

Steelmaking coal unit costs, including transportation charges, fell 9.4 percent in the first quarter from a year earlier, to C$77 a metric ton, while copper cash-unit costs after by-product credits declined 16 percent to $1.29 per pound. “Our operations performed well by reducing our costs while maintaining production volumes,” Chief Executive Officer Don Lindsay said in the statement.

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Zinc Approaches Bull Market on Supply Shortfalls; Miners Advance (Bloomberg News – February 22, 2016)

http://www.bloomberg.com/

Zinc rallied to the highest since October, putting the metal on track to enter a bull market, after production cuts tightened global supplies. Other metals and mining shares climbed.

Zinc soared 21 percent in about six weeks after Glencore Plc and Nyrstar NV last year announced production cuts to cope with a slump in prices. The market will have a deficit of 440,000 metric tons this year, the most in more than a decade, according to Mitsui Mining & Smelting Co.

“The supply-side factor — the dip in output — is the reason for the price rise,” Casper Burgering, a senior economist at ABN Amro Bank NV in Amsterdam, said by phone. “There is really no reason for these low prices and I think that markets have started to realize that.”

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Arizona Mining shows upside at Taylor (Northern Miner – February 5, 2016)

http://www.northernminer.com/

VANCOUVER — When it comes to opportunities in the junior space that tick the prerequisite boxes for mineral development, there aren’t many that can match Arizona Mining (TSX: AZ) and its emerging Taylor zinc-lead-silver deposit roughly 80 km due southeast of Tucson.

The company features an accomplished management team and strong financial backing, and it completed a promising drill campaign last year that hints at the potential for a great mining opportunity driven by high grades and a clear permitting path.

Arizona is the brainchild of chairman — and well-known corporate finance figure — Richard Warke, who founded Augusta Resource and Ventana Gold. The company previously operated under the Wildcat Silver banner before shifting it’s identify in mid-2015 to signal a new focus on the Taylor discovery, which is part of the 140 sq. km Hermosa project.

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Goldman, JPMorgan, Glencore defeat U.S. lawsuit over zinc prices – by Jonathan Stempel (Reuters U.S. – January 7, 2016)

http://www.reuters.com/

A U.S. judge on Thursday dismissed a private antitrust lawsuit in which zinc purchasers accused affiliates of Goldman Sachs Group Inc (GS.N), JPMorgan Chase & Co (JPM.N) and Glencore Plc (GLEN.L) of conspiring to drive up the metal’s price.

In an 87-page decision, U.S. District Judge Katherine Forrest in Manhattan said purchasers failed to show that the defendants artificially inflated zinc prices by violating the Sherman Act, a federal antitrust law.

“It remains possible that shenanigans drove up the price of physical zinc,” Forrest wrote. “But, at long last, plaintiffs have not adequately alleged that such price movement was due to a plausible antitrust violation, as opposed to parallel, unilateral conduct beyond the reach of that statutory scheme.”

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MINE SITE NEWS Remembering the Polaris Mine – by Donna Cragg (Canadian Mining Journal – October 31, 2002)

http://www.canadianminingjournal.com/

Teck Cominco’s Polaris base metal mine closed in August 2002. It was the most northerly base metal mine in the world

Teck Cominco’s Polaris base metal mine closed in August 2002. It was the most northerly base metal mine in the world, which meant dealing with permafrost and the Arctic. Life on site was unique. Here are the recollections of Donna Cragg, paymaster accounting assistant. More tributes to Polaris can be found at www.teckcominco.com and in the latest Orbit magazine.

When the Polaris lead/zinc mine on Little Cornwallis Island in Canada’s high arctic was being planned, commissioned and started up in the late 1970s and early ’80s, I had no idea how important a role the mine would play for me. Now, as operations wind down, I can’t imagine what life would have been like without the opportunity to work and live here in the north.

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High in the Andes, A Mine Eats a 400-Year-Old City – by Tony Dajer (National Geographic – December 2, 2015)

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/

CERRO DE PASCO, Peru—For a woman intent on moving an entire city, fifty-six-year old Congresswoman Gloria Ramos Prudencio, barely five feet tall, looks unassuming. Her city is Cerro de Pasco, population 70,000. Perched on the treeless Peruvian altiplano at 14,200 feet, it’s one of the highest cities on the planet.

“As a girl, walking past Bellavista, where the Americans lived, I would pester my mother, ‘Why do the gringos get the nice houses?’ ” the soft-spoken Ramos recalls. “In school my teachers called me preguntona”— she of too many questions.

These days, her main question is how to save her hometown from a very big hole.

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Ross River Kaska weigh benefits of massive lead-zinc mine – by Nancy Thomson (CBC News North – November 23, 2015)

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

Ross River Dena are weighing the pros and cons of the proposed Howard’s Pass lead-zinc mine, as they prepare to vote on a “socio-economic participation agreement” later this winter.

After months of negotiations, the Ross River Dena Council and Selwyn Chihong Mining Ltd. reached a preliminary agreement last month. It offers the Kaska, particularly the Ross River Dena, opportunities for training, employment and a share of the mine’s profits.

It also brings a whiff of opportunity to Ross River, one of Yukon’s smaller communities. According to the 2011 census, the average annual income in Ross River is just $31,000.

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