China producers want to export copper

Copper producers in China, the world’s largest importer of the metal, have announced plans to export the red metal, a rare move aimed at easing a shortage that has pushed prices higher.

Copper prices have risen recently after inventories of the metal outside China fell to unusually low levels, prompting a squeeze at the London Metal Exchange.

Jiangxi Copper, China’s largest copper producer, told the Financial Times on Monday it was planning “large” exports of the metal. The company will “export a certain number of [tonnes of] copper in the next few weeks,” said Frank Chen, senior trader at the company’s international trading division in Shanghai.

The move by China highlights the contrast in conditions inside the country, where demand is weak and stocks are mounting, with those in the rest of the world, where stocks are at their tightest for years.

The Chinese plan, first reported by Reuters, comes in response to a sharp fall in inventories at LME warehouses. Metals traders including Glencore have placed buy orders in recent weeks to take a record amount of the metal out of the exchange’s warehouses to supply their customers.

Excluding metal that has been earmarked for delivery, copper inventories at the LME have fallen to just 150,000 tonnes, the lowest since 2008. That has pushed the price of copper for immediate delivery to the biggest premium over longer-dated futures in four years, a sign of market tightness. The cost of copper for delivery in three months has risen to $8,496.75 a tonne, up nearly 8 per cent in two weeks.

On the other hand, stocks inside China are at record highs, leading some traders to suggest that China has “cornered” the copper market.

The high level of stocks and weaker-than-expected demand within the country have depressed prices on the Shanghai Futures Exchange, putting pressure on companies such as copper smelters who buy the metal in the global market and sell it in China.

“The Chinese smelting industry is bleeding very badly at the moment,” said James Luke, analyst at CICC. “For Chinese smelters you have to import based on LME prices but then sell into the Chinese market and they lose money on that.”

The export plan is difficult to implement because companies would need to ship metal from China to South Korea or Singapore to sell it at LME prices, a process that would take weeks since there are no LME-registered warehouses in China.

If Chinese companies fulfil their promise to export large volumes of copper, the move could depress LME prices in the next few months, analysts said, especially if it was combined with a fall in imports. “The LME has become disconnected from end market demand,” said Guy Wolf at Marex Spectron, a commodities brokerage.

But if the Chinese economy picks up again in the second half of the year, the exports could lay the foundation for a larger rally.

“The single biggest importer of copper on the planet wants to export copper because there is not enough of it outside their own country,” one trader said. “Then what happens when China needs to feed its own requirements?”

Some traders also expressed scepticism about how much copper Chinese smelters could export given their long-term supply commitments to customers within China, and various restrictions and taxes on refined copper exports.

Sourced & published by Henry Sapiecha

TIN & TUNGSTEN MINING IN ENGLAND BY WOLF MINERALS

PLANS by ASX-listed Wolf Minerals to become a tungsten and tin producer from its Hemerdon project in south-west England have attracted a rare demonstration of government support for the jobs and wealth creation ability of mining projects.

Wolf announced last week that the support came directly from Lord Green of Hurstpierpoint, the British Minister of State for Trade and Investment, following Wolf receiving planning consents for the Devon development.

In a letter to the company, Lord Green said Hemerdon was an important project to the community in terms of jobs and wealth creation, and to the British and wider European Union in securing supplies of tungsten.

”I am aware that tungsten ranks highly in both the British Geological Society and EU’s critical raw materials lists and that it has unique properties that are impossible to replace in certain specialised industrial applications,” the former HSBC chairman said.

The British Geological Survey in September listed tungsten as one of the top five strategically important metals.

Wolf is now working on securing $80 million in debt funding for the project, the development of which would serve to ease the grip China has on global supplies of tungsten. More than 80 per cent of global supply comes from China, which has curbed exports of the ”strategic” metal.

Tungsten prices rose by more than 30 per cent last year and are now more than eight times their level before taking off in 2003 in response to limited non-Chinese mine supplies at a time of rising consumption.

CHINA TO WIND DOWN SMALL GOLD MINES

China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) is putting together new standards for the gold industry which will raise the startup barriers, and entities with daily gold processing capacity of less than 50 tons will have to get out of the industry, the Shanghai Securities News said on Tuesday.

Local governments, Reuters reports, have already received orders to shut small gold miners down.  The industry ministry is planning to go even further, by closing mines with a daily gold processing capacity of below 100 tonnes and halting approvals for small ore processing companies.

In addition, large gold miners will be encouraged to expand overseas in order to increase resource supplies.

China, the world’s largest bullion producer, currently has no limits on gold production and production is determined by the gold producers, adds the report.

The record-high prices over the past two years has encouraged miners to boost gold output at all costs, including dubious & dangerous practices that have heavily polluted rivers and soil and, according to Reuters, caused cancer-related deaths to soar in soeveral areas.

Sourced & published by Henry Sapiecha

More bad news for iron ore, coking coal prices: world’s largest steelmaker profits halve, sees worse ahead

ZeeNews report the world’s largest steel-maker Arcelor Mittal on Thursday reported a dip of over 51% in net income to $659 million for the quarter ended September 30, 2011, due to rising raw material costs and a fall in demand. The Indian giant also said it will face increasing pricing and volume pressures in the final quarter and is idling production as a result – it has mothballed eight furnaces in Europe and permanently retired another just over the last two months. Arcelor’s gloomy outlook prompted one analyst to observe: “We’re in a very dark market environment right now.”

Sourced & published by Henry Sapiecha

Nearly all of non-Chinese rare earth projects

will fail, says Jack Lifton

Consultants in the mining industry  say that the high processing costs and level of expertise required in bringing rare earth mines into production means most of them will eventually fail. In an interview with Reuters, Jack Lifton, founder of Technology Metals Research, said of the 244 companies hoping to extract REEs, less than 4% will be profitable: “The choke point for all the companies is the question of what they can do with the concentrated REM ore once it’s above ground. You can extract the rare earths together, but then you have to separate them…the world’s REM separation capacity is 99 percent Chinese and they have unused capacity,” Lifton said. “The Chinese overwhelmingly control this and that is the key to the rare earth industry. Without separation capacity, all you have is a loss-making ore concentrate company.”

Sourced &n published from mining journals by Henry Saoiecha

Various articles on commodities from mining magazine

$25 million spent in Albania by Tirex Resources going a long way

Receives unanimous community support for mining permit applicationsSubmits all required mining application documentation

New Gold goes all-in at Blackwater

Vancouver – New Gold (NGD-T, NGD-N) has put pen to paper with two B.C.-focused junior gold explorers holding land near the company’s most recent acquisition, the Blackwater gold-silver project, located 150 km southwest of Prince George.

La Ronge Gold Corp Announces a Private Placement

VANCOUVER, BRITISH COLUMBIA–(Marketwire – Oct. 18, 2011) – La Ronge Gold Corp. – (TSX VENTURE:LAR) (the “Company”) announces it will undertake a private placement (the “Placement”) consisting of 1,600,000 flow-through units (the “FT Units…

Pebble to challenge borough ordinance in Alaska Superior Court

VANCOUVER, Oct. 18, 2011 /PRNewswire/ – By a narrow 280 – 246 (53 – 47%) margin, voters in Southwest Alaska’s Lake & Peninsula Borough have supported a ballot measure that, if upheld by the courts, would restrict future development that affects more than one square mile of land within the 31,000 square mile borough. The Pebble Limited Partnership (the “Pebble Partnership” or “PLP”) and the State of Alaska view the initiative sponsored by anti-Pebble activists as unconstitutional and unenforceable because it seeks to restrict development of state-owned resources on state lands through a municipal ordinance, and will challenge it in Alaska’s Superior Court.

Northern Vertex announces $12.65 million non-brokered private financing

VANCOUVER, Oct. 18, 2011 /CNW/ – Northern Vertex Capital Inc. (TSXV: NEE) (“Northern Vertex”) is pleased to announce a Non-Brokered private placement (the “Private

Alaska voters say no to gold, copper mine 1:58 am APNews

Voters of a small southwest Alaska borough narrowly passed a measure blocking a proposed gold and copper mine that conservationists said would have threatened one of the world’s premier wild salmon fisheries in a local election that gained national…

Barkerville Gold Mines intercepts 21.5 meters (70.5 feet) of 9.97 g/T (0.291 oz/t) gold including 2.8 meters (9.2 feet) of 52.0 g/T (1.516 oz/t) gold on Cow Mountain

Further to the news releases on the high grade VG-cosalite-quartz-pyrite zones discovered by the Company on Cow Mt. reported by the company respectively on June 27, July 26 and September 13, Barkerville Gold Mines Ltd. (TSX VENTURE:BGM)(FRANKFURT:IWUB) (the “Company”) reports the more significant intercepts of drill results conducted on Cow Mt. recently.

Greens tying up Olympic Dam with new parliamentary inquiry, $30 billion project faces delays

News reports from Australia say BHP Billiton may face delays in getting approvals for its $30 billion Olympic Dam expansion, as Greens and other minor parties holding the balance of power in the South Australian Parliament push for an inquiry into the project. The legal agreement between BHP and the State Government will be introduced to parliament on Tuesday or Wednesday, but the Greens now want BHP Billiton officials to appear before a parliamentary committee to investigate the indenture legislation for the expansion. The project will create an open pit mine adjacent to the current Olympic Dam underground operation that would be the world’s biggest – trucks will haul overburden 24/7 for five to six years just to reach the ore body.

Sourced & published by Henry Sapiecha

Weir Minerals Africa has received its biggest order from India to date – seven Linatex vibrating screens of various sizes for RBSSN, a mining and metals company based in Hospet, in northern Karnataka.

The order includes the biggest screen Weir has supplied to India, with dimensions of 2.4 m by 4.8 m. Weir Minerals Africa’s Chris Dorlas says the order, which is destined for an iron ore application, is a milestone for the company, since it firmly establishes Weir Minerals’ footprint in India and will serve as a reference base for further sales in that country.

The RBSSN order includes three VD18/38, one VD15/38 and one VD21/48 dewatering screens. Linatex dewatering screens incorporate a 45^o sloping back section, fitted with slotted apertures across the direction of the flow. Incoming slurry is fed uniformly along the top of this back section, which acts as a vibrating drainage panel. The screen’s main deck slopes upwards at 5^o and is fitted with smaller slotted apertures.

“This design achieves exceptionally high dewatering and draining capacity,” Dorlas says, “making it possible in many cases to use smaller units than if one was using conventional dewatering screens. This, in turn, reduces the cost of the initial investment in the screens.”

At the lowest point of the screen, where the sloping back and main deck meet, a pool of partially dewatered slurry forms. Here, solid particles bridge over the apertures and form a cake, which acts as a filtration platform, allowing only quite fine particles to pass through. The vibration action conveys the cake along the screen and out of the pool, where further dewatering takes place, depending on the porosity of the cake, which is finally discharged over the adjustable weir into the product chute.

Vibration is produced by two linear motion low noise exciter motors operating at 980 or 1460 rpm. Alternatively, geared exciters with an external drive motor can be fitted to the larger screens. Both the vibrating motors and the geared exciter have been specifically designed to ensure long life, with minimum maintainance requirements.

Easy adjustment of the amplitude of vibration and deck inclination, as well as the discharge weir plate, are features incorporated to suit changes in process requirements. A high solids recovery outcome is achieved when the screen underflow is kept in closed circuit, with the only solid losses occurring as the very fine material exits in the cyclone overflow.

The two large Linatex HG24/48 screens included in the RBSSN order are horizontal linear motion screens. Linear motion is produced by the action of counterweights on separate shafts, geared together to produce a straight line “throw”. The mechanism’s direction of rotation does not affect the pattern of motion.

“Linear motion provides excellent performance in applications such as wet screening, desliming and dewatering, owing to the ability to break the surface tension between deck apertures and the pulp being screened,” Dorlas says. “Screen capacities vary widely, depending on the material characteristics and the separation required.

“Screen design has evolved and improved over many years of operational experience and industry know-how. However, the company has actively taken these improvements to the next level and introduced the Finite Element Analysis (FEA) method of design to our development technology some years ago. Our in-house FEA capabilities have assisted in optimising the mass and strength of the screens, helping to provide lower cost solutions, both in terms of capital and operational costs.”

The Weir Group acquired the Linatex group of companies in September 2010, now marketed as Lintex^® rubber products. Dorlas says that these products are proving a valuable addition to the Weir Minerals product line and assist the company in positioning itself as a solutions provider. The South African Linatex manufacturing facility in Alrode is capable of producing screens up to 4.9 m wide by 10 m in length.

Sourced & published by Henry Sapiecha