The London Metal Exchange (LME) aluminium price chart recovered on the November 9 trading session, wish cash reporting nearly 1 per cent gain compared to the November 6 close. Longer-dated contracts and inventories, however, edged lower. The LME aluminium cash bid as well as offer prices gained 0.96 per cent day-on-day on November 9. The bid recovered from USD 3,115 per tonne to USD 3,145 per tonne. The offer price surged from USD 3,117 per tonne to USD 3,147 per tonne . 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 price reported a 0.33 per cent rise from USD 3,049 per tonne on November 6 to USD 3,059 per tonne on November 9. The offer...
Iran is expanding its domestic aluminium manufacturing capabilities through nanostructured anodising technology, developing specialised aluminium sheets and profiles for applications across aerospace, medical equipment, electronics and automotive industries. The initiative reflects a move towards higher-value aluminium products by improving the metal's surface properties and expanding its potential industrial applications. According to Pars Today, citing Mehr News Agency, an Iranian aluminium complex is using the technology to produce aluminium components with nanostructured ceramic coatings designed to improve resistance to corrosion and wear. The complex is also working on developing specialised aluminium standards and has so far established eight standards in this field. The...
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Qatalum and Hydro , the Norwegian aluminium producer, have together unveiled Hydro’s newly established facility dedicated to researching and testing aluminium used in curtain wall solutions in support of creating energy, emission and carbon neutral buildings in the Middle East. The Zero Energy and Emission Building lab is located on site at the Qatalum smelter and was officially opened on 18th Mar 2013 by Hilde Merete Aasheim, the Vice Chairman of Qatalum and the Executive Vice President of Hydro. Also present were Qatalum CEO Tom Petter Johansen and Qatalum DCEO Khalid Laram. Speaking at this event, Hilde M Aasheim, said: “Today, around 40 per cent of the world’s energy consumption is related to operate buildings, especially to cooling and heating of the buildings we work and live in....
The US Labor Department announced last Friday that the country’s CPI grew by 0.7% in February. The New York Federal Reserve reported its Empire State manufacturing activity index fell in March to 9.24, falling short of expectations. Despite a better-than-expected 0.7% growth in industrial production in the US in February, investors remained worried about economic recovery in the country. As such, LME aluminum gave back gains and closed 0.47% lower at USD 1,964.8/mt, down for a third straight day. Latest LME aluminum inventories increased 125 mt to 5,173,075 mt. Weak global economy and sluggish apparent consumption will dampen market sentiment. LME aluminum should stagnate at USD 1,960/mt and fluctuate in the band of USD 1,940-1,980/mt on Monday. SHFE 1306 aluminum contract prices are...
National Aluminium Co. , India’s second-largest maker of the lightweight metal, plunged the most in more than a year after the government said it would sell shares today at a price last seen four years ago. The shares of the state-controlled company declined as much as 8 percent to 40.55 INR and traded at 40.90 INR as of 10:42 a.m. in Mumbai. The government, which set a minimum price of 40 INR yesterday, is selling 128.9 million shares, with an option to double the offering on demand. Government asset sales at discounted prices have eroded stock values, as Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s administration seeks to bridge the widest budget deficit among the biggest emerging economies. The minimum price for shares in NTPC Ltd., India’s biggest utility, was set at 145 INR on Feb. 6, the day the...
A number of the base metals are in oversupply right now, which is keeping prices depressed. BMO Capital Markets analyst Jessica Fung places some of the blame on Chinese reserve buying. She noted that China’s State Reserve’s Bureau has issued tenders to buy 300,000 tonnes of primary aluminum from domestic smelters. The bureau’s goal is to support metal prices for domestic smelters in the near term, but she wrote that it just perpetuates the “fundamental issue of oversupply” of this metal. Aluminum prices are stuck at US87¢ a pound, down from highs of above US$1.00 last year. Inventories remain at all-time high relative levels, Ms. Fung wrote, with the “eventual unwinding of massive carry trades limiting price upside for years to come.” She noted that UC Rusal’s plan to cut 300,000 tonnes...
Aluminum rose in London, leading gains by industrial metals amid strengthening European equities and signs of demand. The Stoxx 600 Europe Index (SXXP) of shares reached an almost five-year high. It’s up from the close on Feb. 1, while the LME Index of the six main metals traded in London is down 6.9 percent, more than oil traded in New York. Demand for trucks in Brazil is set to increase as much as 10 percent this year, the head of Daimler AG’s truck division said yesterday. “The recent downward move was exaggerated and base metals underperformed equities and the cyclical commodities like crude oil,” Daniel Briesemann, an analyst at Commerzbank AG in Frankfurt, said by e-mail. “The low prices are obviously seen as attractive buying opportunities.” Aluminum for delivery in three months...
Norwegian aluminum producer Norsk Hydro ASA said on Friday that the current weakness and uncertainty in the world economy is weighing on the aluminum price, but underlying factors point to continued solid growth in demand. CEO Svein Richard Brandtzaeg says: "Weakness and uncertainty in the world economy weighs on the aluminium price. When I express my belief in the future of aluminium, it's because the underlying factors point to continued solid growth in demand for aluminium." "We are seeing through substantial improvement programs in all of our business areas and have taken important strategic actions that will make us more robust regardless of what the future brings - and will make us the aluminium industry's winner when demand catches up to production." Shares closed Thursday at...
Oleg Deripaska, the CEO of the world's largest aluminum company Rusal said global commodity producers need to cut output by up to 10 percent to bring the market back to balance. "At the moment in many industries not just aluminum, [but] steel, cement, nickel we have a very urgent call to reduce output because the financial crisis created huge distortions in terms of demand," Deripaska told CNBC Europe's "Closing Bell" in London. "We are seeing maybe the last act of the drama when a lot of CEOs with a very good career were punished last year because of shareholders suffering on the return on their investments and I think this has created a very important shift of paradigm," Deripaska added. "We produce so much product which currently occupies warehouse around the world and at the moment we...
China’s state reserves manager signed agreements today with six smelters to buy 300,000 metric tons of aluminum at 15,137 yuan ($2,434) a ton in a bid to bolster local prices. The State Bureau of Material Reserve will pay about 4 percent more than the spot price for the metal to be delivered in April and May, data provider SMM Information & Technology Co. said on its website today. That compares with a spot price of 14,550 yuan on Shanghai’s Changjiang Nonferrous Metal Market. “The stockpiling plan could help tighten the market in April and May,” Huang Fulong, an analyst at Citic Securities Futures Co., said by phone from Shenzhen. “The agreed price was slightly lower than market expected.” The sellers include Aluminum Corp. of China Ltd., better known as Chalco, China Power Investment...
A Kentucky lawmaker on Thursday said he was prepared to ask Governor Steve Beshear to consider his bill to allow Century Aluminum and Rio Tinto Alcan to buy lower cost power for their smelters in the state from the open market rather than at locked-in costs from Big Rivers Electric. State Representative Tommy Thompson, a Democrat and chief sponsor of H.B. 211, said in an interview that he was ready to do whatever it takes to prevent the shutdown of Century's 244,000 mt/year Hawesville smelter and RTA's 180,000 mt/year Sebree smelter. Both companies say the smelters may close within the next year unless they can find a cheaper alternative to the roughly $50/MWh they are paying for about 850 MW supplied by Big Rivers Electric, a Henderson-based generation and transmission co-op. Big Rivers...
Dubai Quality Group, a non-profit organization that advances learning, promotes quality improvement and business excellence practices, has renewed its strategic partnership with Dubai Aluminum (DUBAL), a pioneering Investor Partner of DQG, as both parties aim to leverage DUBAL’s leadership within the aluminium industry to promote greater awareness about corporate excellence in the UAE. DQG conducted an investor membership appreciation ceremony today (March 13, 2013) and awarded a special certificate to DUBAL in recognition of its role in promoting high quality standards within the aluminum industry and the UAE’s business community in general. Dr. Yousef Al Akraf, Chairman of DQG, and Badriya Al Tamimi, Managing Director of DQG, presented the certificate to Abdullah Kalban, President & CEO...
Shares of state-run Nalco on Thursday tumbled nearly six per cent in early trade, ahead of its share sale programme where the government will sell up to 10 per cent stake in the aluminium major. After making a weak opening, shares of the company further lost 5.61 per cent to Rs 43.7 on the BSE in an overall weak stock market. There would also be an "option to sell an additional 12,88,61,925 equity shares of the face value of INR 5 each of the company... collectively aggregating to approximately 10 per cent of the total paid up equity share capital of the company," the company had said in a filing to the BSE. The government currently holds 87.15 per cent stake in Nalco.
A panel of Indian ministers gave the government the go-ahead to sell a part of its stake in state-run National Aluminium Co. Ltd. through a public offering Friday, Disinvestment Secretary Ravi Mathur said. The federal cabinet had already approved a 12.15% stake sale in the aluminum producer. Wednesday’s meeting of the panel of ministers was to decide the date of the sale as well as the share price, which Mr. Mathur said will be announced after market hours Thursday. Mr. Mathur didn’t give details on whether Friday’s sale will be for all of the proposed stake or if it would be sold in tranches. However, another senior finance ministry official, who didn’t wish to be named, said the size of Friday’s offering would be announced later Wednesday. The two officials also didn’t say how much the...
Taking weak cues from global markets, aluminium prices fell marginally to Rs 105.65 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 delivery in March declined by 20 paise, or 0.19 per cent, to Rs 105.85 per kg in business turnover of 389 lots. Similarly, the metal for delivery in April traded lower by 15 paise, or 0.14 per cent, to Rs 107.35 per kg in 19 lots. Globally, aluminium lost 0.8 per cent to $1,966 per tonne. Market analysts said the weakness in aluminium at futures trade was mostly in tandem with a downtrend in base metals at the London Metal Exchange and subdued spot demand.
Aluminum in London rose to a one-week high amid speculation that China’s reserves manager will buy the metal from smelters. Aluminum for delivery in three months advanced as much as 0.6 percent to $1,993 a metric ton on the London Metal Exchange, the highest since March 5, before trading at $1,990.25 at 3:19 p.m. Shanghai time.
Southeastern Europe?s largest aluminum producer Aluminum SA has secured a long-awaited commercial license for its cogeneration power plant, allowing it to sell electricity on the Greek market, the chairman of the conglomerate that owns the company said. "We have a license. It has taken us five years, but we have one," Mytilineos Holdings SA Chairman Evangelos Mytilineos said according to press reports citing Dow Jones Newswires. The delay in obtaining the plant?s commercial license--partly due to a delay in Greece?s adoption of European Union legislation on cogeneration--has cost the company dearly in estimated lost revenues, said Mr. Mytilineos. The licensing delay "has cost us a lot of money--more than 100 million euros," said Mr. Mytilineos.
Aluminium showed some strength on the local non-ferrous metal market on Wednesday with prices rising by Rs 2 per kg on increased demand from consuming industries amid a firming global trend. Sentiment turned better after aluminium rose to a one-week high in overseas markets amid speculation that an improving US economy will drive prices higher, prompting Chinese users to place orders. Meanwhile, aluminium climbed 0.4 per cent to $ 1,989 a tonne on the London Metal Exchange. Aluminium ingot, sheet cutting, aluminium wire scrap and aluminium utensils were also traded higher by Rs 2 each to Rs 142, Rs 143, Rs 146 and Rs 142 per kg respectively.
Bosnia's sole aluminium smelter Aluminij Mostar said it may have to close down if it continues to make losses in a weak market beset with slumping demand and rising energy costs. The country's top exporter, which sells most of its aluminium into the depressed European construction and auto industries, said its supervisory board will decide next month whether to cover a 2012 loss of 65.8 million Bosnian marka ($43.8 million) by dipping into the company's core capital. "If Aluminij, with reduced core capital, posts a similar or bigger loss this year, that may be the company's end," Aluminij General Manager Ivo Bradvica said in the company's annual newsletter.
Beijing’s powerful stockpiling agency is to buy 300,000 tonnes of aluminium in the coming weeks, in one of the most significant attempts to support the struggling Chinese metals industry since the 2008-09 crises. As well as being the largest consumer of industrial metals, China is the top producer of many, including aluminium, for which it accounts for 40 per cent of global output. But its smelters, which suffer from some of the highest production costs in the world, have been struggling with weak demand, high inventories and industry overcapacity. Benchmark global aluminium prices on the London Metal Exchange have dropped 4.1 per cent since the start of the year, once again sliding below $2,000 a tonne – compared with the $2,300-$2,500 a tonne needed by higher cost smelters to break...
