Nickel is year’s biggest metals loser, copper manages small gain
Vedanta faces investor reckoning over $3.2 billion of bonds
Ionic Rare Earths granted mining license in Uganda
Guinea Alumina Corp will let Guinea use its fuel berth after blast
Biden extends EU steel, aluminum tariff exemption for 2 years
Aneka Tambang sells shares of subsidiaries to world’s biggest EV battery company
Nickel is year’s biggest metals loser, copper manages small gain
In a mostly lackluster year for metals trading, nickel emerged as the worst performer and might not see a reprieve anytime soon.
The metal used in stainless steel and electric vehicle batteries posted an annual drop of 45% on the London Metal Exchange, the biggest decline since 2008. That’s by far the worst outcome among industrial metals, and contrasts with a 2.2% gain for copper or with iron ore’s advance of about 20% in Singapore.
Metals have been pressured this year by global economic headwinds and uncertainty over China’s growth outlook. The LME’s all-in gauge of six metals is down 5.6% for the year, a second annual decline.
In most cases, concerns over tightening supply or even shortages have proved unfounded or perhaps premature. But those worries were particularly true for nickel, a market that’s been flooded with a wave of new material from top producer Indonesia. Demand growth has also faded.
“Nickel supply continues to grow, but consumption is showing no sign of improvement,” Huatai Futures analysts wrote in a note posted on its website.
Investors continue to bet against nickel. Net-short positions on the metal among the top 20 brokers on the Shanghai Futures Exchange are currently the biggest in at least six months.
Copper’s annual gain comes after a fourth-quarter rebound, helped by optimism that the Federal Reserve will start cutting interest rates next year. Prices will hit $10,000 a metric ton within 12 months, Goldman Sachs Group Inc. said in a Dec. 18 note.
On the final trading day of 2023, copper dropped 0.8% to settle at $8,559 a ton and nickel fell 0.8% to close at $16,603 a ton.
Vedanta faces investor reckoning over $3.2 billion of bonds
Vedanta Resources Ltd. faces a moment of reckoning this week as Indian billionaire Anil Agarwal’s miner seeks approval for a proposal that could help it buy more time to honor its debt liabilities.
Bondholders have until Jan. 2 to give an early consent on a plan to push out due dates on $3.2 billion in bond repayments, a move that prompted S&P Global Ratings in December to cut the company’s rating deeper into junk.
Vedanta needs a green light from at least two-thirds of the bondholders in each of the three securities to proceed with the plan. A holder meeting will be held on Jan. 4.
The bid to revise the terms of its dollar bonds marks the latest attempt by Agarwal’s group to bolster its balance sheet, having already sold a stake in its Mumbai-listed subsidiary and secured a $1.25 billion private loan. But the fact Vedanta borrowed money at 18% to refinance debt underscores concerns about its finances.
Ionic Rare Earths granted mining license in Uganda
Ionic Rare Earths Ltd (ASX: IXR; OTC: IXRRF) has been provisionally granted a mining license for the Makuutu Rare Earths Project in Uganda.
The license marks the first large-scale mining license to be awarded in Uganda.
“This is an important step forward for Ionic Rare Earths in mining, refining, and recycling the heavy rare earths critical for the energy transition, advanced manufacturing, and defense,” said Ionic Rare Earths Managing Director Tim Harrison.
“This reinforces the Makuutu Heavy Rare Earth Project as one of the world’s largest and most advanced development-ready heavy rare earth element assets.”
The Stage 1 Mining License covers approximately 44 square kilometers of the project’s near 300 square kilometers of tenements at Makuutu.
Currently, the company’s greater Makuutu Mineral Resource Estimate (MRE) is estimated at 532 million tonnes at 640 ppm Total Rare Earth Oxide (TREO) with a cut-off grade of 200 parts per million (ppm) TREO minus Cerium Oxide (CeO2).
Guinea Alumina Corp will let Guinea use its fuel berth after blast
Bauxite from a Guinea Alumina Corporation operation.
Guinea Alumina Corporation (GAC), owned by major producer Emirates Global Aluminium, has offered the Guinea government the use of GAC’s fuel berth and bulk storage infrastructure to help deal with the aftermath of an oil terminal blast.
Supply from Guinea, the world’s third largest producer of alumina raw material bauxite, has been in focus, supporting aluminum prices in London, after the Dec. 18 blast damaged fuel tanks at the main oil terminal handling fuel imports.
There is no impact on GAC’s production or shipments to customers, the company said in an emailed statement to Reuters, adding it expected no interruptions to its mining, rail and export activities.
Guinea said on Saturday that supplies of fuel to petrol stations were expected to improve significantly following diplomatic efforts with neighbouring countries.
The Dec. 18 blast killed 23 people and damaged most of the fuel tanks at the West African nation’s main oil terminal that handles its fuel imports, leading to shortages.
Biden extends EU steel, aluminum tariff exemption for 2 years
US President Joe Biden on Thursday extended the suspension of tariffs on European Union steel and aluminum for two years to continue negotiations on measures to address overcapacity and low-carbon production.
The United States suspended import tariffs of 25% on EU steel and 10% on EU aluminum for two years from January 2022, replacing the tariffs imposed by former President Donald Trump with a tariff rate quota (TRQ) system.
EU tariffs, imposed in retaliation, covered a range of US goods from Harley Davidson motorcycles to bourbon whiskey and power boats. Those have also been shelved until 2025, after elections on both sides of the Atlantic.
The United States and the European Union had been seeking agreement measures to address excess metal production capacity in non-market economies, such as China, and to promote greener steel. The discussions were supposed to be resolved by 2023 but had stalled.
In a presidential proclamation, Biden said the two sides had made “substantial progress” and were “continuing their discussions.”
The TRQ allows up to 3.3 million metric tons of EU steel and 384,000 tons of aluminum into the United States tariff-free, reflecting past trade levels, with the tariffs applying for any further amounts. The new exemption applies through December 31, 2025.
Aneka Tambang sells shares of subsidiaries to world’s biggest EV battery company
Indonesian miner Aneka Tambang has sold shares worth $467.18 million in two of its subsidiaries to a unit of the world’s biggest electric vehicle battery maker, China’s Contemporary Amperex Technology Co (CATL).
In a disclosure published late on Thursday, Aneka Tambang, known as Antam, said it made the sales to Ningbo Contemporary Brunp Lygend Co Ltd (CBL) through the latter’s Hong Kong unit. CBL is a holding subsidiary of CATL, according to its website.
The sales, which were completed on Thursday, mean CBL controls 49% of PT Sumberdaya Arindo and 60% of PT Feni Haltim.
The sales are part of an agreement to set up joint ventures to develop an electric vehicle “ecosystem” in Indonesia, the statement said, which includes a plan to build a high-pressure acid leaching (HPAL) plant to process nickel ore into materials used in batteries.
The government of Indonesia, home to the world’s largest nickel reserves, has set an ambitious target of producing some 600,000 EVs by 2030. That would be more than 100 times the number sold in Indonesia in the first half of 2023.
