Archive

BY MARK ROWE
THAILAND’S Thainox Steel Ltd has received approval from the country’s Commerce Ministry to increase the price of its stainless steel by 28 per cent to Baht 105.94 per kilogramme (GBPounds 1.85). Steel product makers have been lobbying to have government-regulated price ceilings lifted, citing raw material costs that are at 10-year highs.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE AUSTRALIAN aluminium industry will be a key beneficiary of a new free trade deal between its government and the USA that removes all tariffs on metals traded between the two countries, Australia’s Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade has claimed.…

BY MATTHEW BRACE
THE INTERNATIONAL trade deal between the USA and Australia – which has been welcomed by the antipodean non-ferrous metals industry – could be threatened by anger amongst Australian sugar producers who have been excluded. They say they may use their influence amongst right-wing and independent members of the Australian senate to stall ratification, in a chamber not numerically controlled by the country’s Liberal-National government.…

BY RICHARD HURST
THE HUNDRED-year-old Kilomoto gold mine in the north east of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) is to resume its gold production this month. Cosma Balongelwa, managing director of the mine, said that it had recommissioned equipment in January and that its management were expecting to produce three to four kilogrammes of gold in the next two weeks.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Union has joined formal World Trade Organisation (WTO) consultations between Bangladesh and India over New Delhi’s imposition of anti-dumping duties on Bangladeshi exports of lead acid batteries. Brussels said it “shared a substantial trade interest” in the dispute, which could go to binding arbitration if it is not solved by the talks.…

BY MARK ROWE
RUSSIAN Aluminium has held talks with the country’s state-owned rail monopoly Russian Railways (RZD) with a view to their cooperation in mining ferrous-titanium ore in Siberia. RZD has invested Roubles 8.5 billion (US$298 million) in building a rail link to the Chineiskoye field in the Chita region, just east of Lake Baikal.…

BY RICHARD HURST
THE WORLD Bank and the Nordic Development Fund have announced that they will be donating US$52 million to Zambia to tackle environmental problems associated with its copper and cobalt mines. Ohene Nyanin, World Bank country manager in Zambia said that the funds would be used to strengthen existing regulatory and institutional frameworks to improve mine compliance with environmental guidelines.…

BY MATTHEW BRACE
A CHINESE government corporation has struck an agreement with two Papua New Guinean companies to advance the A$855 million (US$675 million) Ramu Nickel project to development. The Ramu Nickel Mine is located in the mountainous Madang Province, just south of this region’s capital Madang on the Papua New Guinea (PNG) north coast.…

BY MONICA DOBIE
THIEVES looking to cash in on the current high prices of industrial scrap non-ferrous metals have stolen more than CDN$2 million (US$1.49 million) worth of nickel and aluminium in Montreal Canada. Several thousand kilograms of nickel cathodes and roughly 3.6 tonnes of aluminium were carted off in separate night raids in what police have identified as “professional heists”.…

BY MONICA DOBIE
LANDOWNERS in British Columbia (BC), Canada, are appealing against a court decision confirming the right of mining companies to exploit minerals under local land that they do not own. The case involved Western Industrial Clay Products, who staked a claim to clay under a couple’s ranch in Kamloops, BC, to make cat litter.…