The Commodities Feed: Zinc supply woes | MENAFN.COM – MENAFN.COM

The Commodities Feed: Zinc supply woes | MENAFN.COM – MENAFN.COM

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Warren Patterson

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Wenyu Yao

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The latest supply woes in zinc pushed LME 3m prices to a three-year high, hitting an intra-day high of $3,440/t yesterday, whilst prices in Shanghai jumped to their highest in nearly 14 years. Nyrstar said it would slash zinc production at three smelters in Europe by up to 50% due to rising power prices and costs associated with carbon emissions. Prior to this, Nyrstar had already announced that it would cut zinc production at a Dutch plant due to rising power prices last month. We discussed this in detail in a note released yesterday . As for copper, the LME cash/3m spread backwardation continued to move higher, reaching US$95/t (highest since May 2014) as inventories continue to fall.

China released its preliminary trade data for metals, which shows that copper imports halted their five months of declines in September, as shipments held up by the coronavirus pandemic finally arrived. Total monthly shipments for unwrought copper rose 3% MoM to 406kt last month; however, they were still