In September it was my great pleasure to give one of the plenary presentations for China Metals Week in Beijing, organised by Metal Pages. My presentation aim was to draw together the themes of the conference, which were the electronic metals, battery metals, light alloys and antimony. The presentation was entitled: "An Economic History of the Esoteric Metals Markets: Batteries, Electronics, Light Alloys,… Read this post →
In a recent in depth article we discussed “What’s hot, what’s not and why” in the commodities world, based on a presentation by CRU Group at the ITRI International Tin Conference last month. Looking at the medium term prospects for a number of commodities, the article concluded that for a commodity to be “hot” with strong positive price fundamentals it… Read this post →
At the recent ITRI International Tin Conference, metals and mining consultancy CRU Group presented an update of its "Commodity Price Climate Change" forecast. This has nothing to do with which commodities would benefit from an anthropogenically warmed planet (we'll cover that another day), but is a way of summarising their views of whether commodity price outlooks will be “hot”, “warm”,… Read this post →
The final stop on our tour of the SE Asian Tinbelt, which started in Malaysia and Thailand, is the current source of nearly one-third of the world's mined tin - Indonesia. Stopping briefly in Jakarta to attend the spectacle of an Indonesian wedding and narrowly missing out on a visit from Indonesia’s most famous former resident, Barack Obama (he was… Read this post →
Considering it has provided most of the world's tin, the South East Asian Tinbelt is probably not as well known and understood as it should be. This visit highlighted the fundamental long-term supply challenges the industry faces and the implications this has for the LME's least-followed metal. Our bullish travel account provides a background on the tin mining industry, a… Read this post →
