A 15,000-ton shipment of primary aluminum from Venezuela has arrived at the Port of Avondale in New Orleans, Louisiana, marking the first Venezuelan aluminum shipment to the United States in nearly a decade and potentially reopening a long-dormant supply route between the two countries. The cargo was unloaded on October 5 in an event attended by US Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum, House Majority Leader Steve Scalise and Representative Julia Letlow. The shipment is part of a broader commercial initiative involving US investment firm Heeney Capital and commodity trader Mercuria Energy Group, with the aluminum produced by Venezuela’s state-owned CVG Venalum. The shipment is considerably larger than Venezuela’s last reported US-bound aluminum cargo. The country last shipped primary...
The London Metal Exchange (LME) aluminium price chart continued to slip across the pricing and contract segments on the October 5 trading session, reporting declines over the October 2 close . Meanwhile, the LME three-month Asian Reference Price benchmark alone reported a gain of nearly one per cent. The LME aluminium cash bid price dipped slightly by 0.1 per cent day-on-day, shifting from USD 3,109 per tonne to USD 3,106 per tonne. The offer price contracted from USD 3,109.5 per tonne to USD 3,107 per tonne, reflecting an even more modest 0.08 per cent decline. Explore- Most comprehensive and forward-looking industry-focused report — Global Bauxite & Alumina Market Forecast to 2036: Supply–Demand, Trade Flows & Price Outlook The LME aluminium three-month bid and offer prices faltered by...
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Buyers and sellers involved in the negotiations for Japanese aluminum import contracts for the first quarter of 2014 are moving closer in their premium ideas, sources said Wednesday. One Japanese trader said he had bid $249/mt plus London Metal Exchange cash CIF Japan to overseas producers who have offered $255-256/mt and $270/mt plus LME cash CIF Japan. The bids were for premiums over the LME cash prices for P1020A 99.7%-grade primary aluminum ingot, sows and T-bars to be exported to main Japanese ports. The negotiations are in the third week now. Two Japanese consumers said they had proposed rollover of Q4 2013 premiums of $245-246/mt plus LME cash CIF to Q1 2014. One producer source said he was seeing settlements in the range of $253-255/mt plus LME cash CIF, but has not closed any...
Output of aluminum outside China will trail demand by 2.4 million metric tons in 2017, eroding stockpiles and reversing a decline in prices, said United Co. Rusal, the largest producer of the metal. “We already see the aluminum market falling into deficit due to curtailments and strong consumption,” Deputy Chief Executive Officer Oleg Mukhamedshin said in an interview in Moscow. “Rising aluminum premiums are a good sign of this. We expect the market deficit, excluding China, will only grow until at least 2017 due to increasing demand and capacity cuts.” Prices for aluminum, used in products from beverage cans to aircraft, have slumped 16 percent in 2013, heading for the second annual drop in three years. The metal is trading at the lowest level since 2009, with stockpiles of aluminum...
Offers for China's domestic spot aluminum alloy ADC12 slipped, affected mainly by weaker aluminum ingot prices, while the demand remained steady, seeing no significant change from the previous week, industry sources said. Domestic offers for ADC12 were mostly at Yuan 15,700-15,800/mt ($2,577-2,593/mt) ex-works, though a buyer source claimed to have heard indications around Yuan 15,400/mt but he did not buy. However, sources generally agreed that offers had dropped by about Yuan 100/mt week on week. Platts assessed its weekly China domestic ADC12 price at Yuan 15,600-15,800/mt ex-works Tuesday, down from Yuan 15,800-15,900/mt last week. "Domestic offers have dropped by Yuan 50-100/mt from last week due to weaker primary aluminum ingot prices, while the demand has remained steady," said a...
The head of Rio Tinto's global aluminum business says it will complete the modernization of its Kitimat smelter in British Columbia but will pull back on capital spending around the world. Rio Tinto plans to cut capital spending by at least 20 per cent in each of the next two years. For 2014, spending would fall to US$11 billion from $14 billion this year. By 2015, it will be reduced to $8 billion. Rio Tinto, which bought Canadian aluminum operation Alcan in 2007 for $38 billion, is shutting its money-losing Gove alumina refinery in Australia’s Northern Territory and pulling back on aluminum investment around the world. It aims to save $1 billion a year on costs in its aluminum operations, CEO Sam Walsh said during a company investor meeting in Sydney, Australia. Rio Tinto Alcan CEO...
Wilmington Iron and Metal and Metaldyne Bluffton were the largest unsecured creditors in the bankruptcy filing of US recycler Global Scrap Management along with its aluminum foundry division Altimet, which filed for Chapter 11 protection November 26 in US Bankruptcy Court, Southern District of Ohio. Headquartered in Batavia, Ohio, Global Scrap Management started in 2003 as an aluminum brokerage firm and later opened a scrap processing facility in 2008, according to its website. It opened its Altimet secondary aluminum smelter in 2011. Court documents filed by GSM list an outstanding claim amount of $339,838 for Wilmington, Ohio-based supplier Wilmington Iron and Metal and $245,619 for Metaldyne Bluffton of Bluffton, Indiana. The list of creditors holding the 20 largest unsecured claims...
LME aluminium is expedited to test a support at $1,732 per tonne, a break below which will lead to a further loss to $1,619. The support is provided by the 100 percent Fibonacci projection level of a downward wave C, blocking the way towards the 123.6 percent projection level at $1,691, the 123.6 percent projection level. Given that there has not been any decent rebound against this wave, chances are, a bounce may be triggered at around $1,732. But a drop to $1,725 will signal a break below this support. The views expressed are his own. No information in this analysis should be considered as being business, financial or legal advice. Each reader should consult his or her own professional or other advisers for business, financial or legal advice regarding the products mentioned in the...
Humble aluminum's plasmonic properties may make it far more valuable than gold and silver for certain applications, reckons a new research done by scientists with Rice University of the United States. Because aluminum, as nanoparticles or nanostructures, displays optical resonances across a much broader region of the spectrum than either gold or silver, it may be a good candidate for harvesting solar energy and for other large-area optical devices and materials that would be too expensive to produce with coinage metals, said the university based in Houston, a city in the U.S. state of Texas, in a press release to announce the latest research result Monday. Until recently, aluminum had not yet been seen as useful for plasmonic applications for several reasons: It naturally oxidizes, and...
India’s National Aluminium Co (Nalco) sold 5,000 tonnes of aluminium ingot at a premium of $230 per tonne over LME cash price on a Singapore cif basis, according to two trader sources familiar with the deal. Nalco’s tender, that closed last week, was for delivery of 1,250 tonnes of aluminium per month from November to March, the sources said. The company’s last tender, earlier in November, was for 6,000 tonnes of aluminium at a premium of $229 per tonne.
The closure of Rio Tinto's Australian alumina refinery in Gove will have no effect on Southland's Tiwai Pt aluminium smelter. The mining giant, which is the majority owner of the New Zealand Aluminium Smelters, announced last week it would suspend alumina production at the Northern Territory plant - putting up to 1500 jobs on the chopping block - including former Tiwai boss Ryan Cavanagh and four Southlanders. After years of losing money producing alumina at the Gove refinery, Rio said it was no longer a viable business. It will now concentrate on maintaining its bauxite mining on the Arnhem Land site. New Zealand Aluminium Smelters general manager external affairs Joseph Dowling said the closure would have no impact on the Tiwai Pt smelter. The smelter got little (less than 1 per cent)...
The aluminum market has finally turned a corner after years of being in surplus, according to Barclays Capital. "The pace of supply rationing ex-China is enough to drive a small but nonetheless significant global market deficit in 2014," Barclays analyst Nicholas Snowdon wrote in a note. For the past five years, the aluminum market has been described as 'structurally over supplied', but production cuts have already pushed the market into a deficit this year and this will get bigger in 2014 provided all the cuts are implemented, according to Snowdon. The global market balance will shift into a 275,000t deficit this year for the first time since 2006-07, according to Snowdon. In mid-2013, Barclays had been forecasting a 1.2Mt surplus. The "critical shift" has been on the supply side...
The Aluminum Association released today the 2012 Aluminum Statistical Review, the most comprehensive source for North American industry data, covering every cycle of the production process from primary aluminum to finished goods to the recovery of aluminum scrap. The review shows that, for the third straight year, aluminum demand grew in the United States and Canada, led by growth in the transportation and building and construction markets. Among key findings in this year's report: Aluminum demand in North America increased by 5.1 percent to 23.7 billion pounds in 2012. • Aluminum supply increased 2.1 percent to 24.6 billion pounds. • Shipments of aluminum to the transportation industry increased 14.2 percent to 7.1 billion pounds on increased auto builds. • Shipments in the building and...
Taking weak cues from global markets, aluminium prices fell to INR 108.05 per kg in futures trading today as speculators offloaded their positions. Further, sluggish demand in the domestic spot markets also weighed on the metal prices. At the Multi Commodity Exchange, aluminium for December contract declined by 30 paise, or 0.28%, to INR 108.05 per kg in business turnover of 72 lots. Similarly, the metal for delivery in January next year traded lower by 30 paise, or 0.27%, to INR 109.60 per kg in one lot. Globally, aluminium for delivery in three months on the London Metal Exchange (LME) lost 0.5% to $1,747 per tonne. Market analysts said the weakness in aluminium at futures trade was mostly in tandem with an overseas downtrend after stockpiles climbed. Meanwhile, inventories tracked by...
Aluminum fell to the lowest since 2009 in London as stockpiles expanded to the highest in almost four months, underscoring concern that demand will trail output of the metal used in everything from beverage cans to airplanes. Inventories tracked by the London Metal Exchange rose to 5.47 million metric tons today, a third straight gain and the highest since Aug. 7. Prices slumped 16 percent in 2013, heading for the second annual drop in three years. Global output of aluminum will rise 6.2 percent this year, exceeding demand by about 500,000 tons, according to Societe Generale SA. The outlook for surpluses in materials ranging from aluminum to zinc helped drive the LME index of six main metals down 13 percent this year. The metals “complex will likely push lower over the first half of...
Reuters reported that some big aluminum firms have offered Japanese buyers a premium of USD 255 per tonne to USD 256 per tonne for January to March shipments, below the offer from top producer United Company Rusal last week but still around a record high. Sources said that Japan is Asia's biggest importer of the metal and the premiums for primary metal shipments it agrees to pay each quarter over the London Metal Exchange cash price set the benchmark for the region. The latest quarterly pricing negotiations began late last week between Japanese buyers and miners including Rusal, Rio Tinto Limited, Alcoa Inc and BHP Billiton. They are expected to continue into next month. Rusal said last week it had offered January-March shipments of the metal to Japanese buyers at a premium of USD 270 per...
Rio Tinto will demonstrate strong progress and performance against its commitment of delivering greater value for shareholders at its investor seminar in Sydney today. In addition to presenting results achieved year-to-date, the company will outline what it is doing to capitalise on long-term attractive industry fundamentals. There will be an in-depth look at its Aluminium, Copper and Iron Ore product groups. Some of the key points from the seminar include: • The delivery of a US$1.8 billion improvement in operating cash costs in the ten months to October, and on track to deliver the US$2 billion target for 2013. • US$3.3 billion of divestments of non-core assets announced or completed in 2013. To date, proceeds of US$2.3 billion have been received in divestments of non-core businesses,...
According to an analyst at Alpari, the aluminum industry is one of the most attractive investments at this point. While metallurgy companies still cannot recover form the crisis (which led to aluminum overproduction, price collapse and shutdowns across the globe), China is still a strategical consumer of aluminum. During the latest crisis, the minimal price was set in Feb 2009 at 1251,75 dollars per metric ton versus 3315 dollars per ton seen on July 15th, 2008. In 223 days the price dropped 62,23%! During the next 3 years the price recovered up to 2800 dollars per ton (+123,6%). In May 2011, the price started another major downtrend, which is still underway. At this point, the retracement from the previous rally (L1251,75-H2803) is around 70%. On Friday, the London Metal Exchange closed...
Japanese consortium Nippon Asahan and the Indonesian government are close to finalizing the handover of the 250,000 mt/year Asahan aluminum smelter, a Japanese source familiar with the negotiations said Monday. "We are continuing the negotiations and are likely to strike an agreement with the Indonesian government soon," the Japanese company official said. The Indonesian government took full ownership of the 250,000 mt/year Indonesia Asahan Aluminium, or Inalum, smelter November 1 after the JV's master cooperation agreement expired October 31. The smelter had previously been owned 58.88% by the consortium of 11 companies and 41.12% by Indonesia. The Jakarta Post reported November 14 that the two parties had agreed in principle on a tentative valuation of Inalum's assets at $556 million,...
Aluminium prices fell by 0.30 per cent to INR 107.95 per kg in futures trading today as speculators offloaded their positions driven by weak global trend on supply outlook. At the Multi Commodity Exchange, aluminium for delivery in December declined by 40 paise, or 0.30 per cent, to INR 107.95 per kg in business turnover of 179 lots. Similarly, the metal for delivery in November traded lower by 30 paise, or 0.28 per cent to INR 105.95 per kg in 232 lots.
