The Chinese antimony price, despite dropping for the sixth consecutive week, has slowed its pace of descent in the latest assessment period ended Wednesday April 3 after suppliers resisted cutting prices and halted production instead to avoid further losses.
Meanwhile, low offers were heard in Europe, where prices continued to follow a downtrend last week. Fastmarkets' price assessment for MMTA standard-grade II antimony, delivered duty-paid in China stood at 43,500-45,000 yuan ($6,473-6,697) per tonne on Wednesday, down 0.6% from 44,000-45,000 yuan per tonne a week earlier. The price has fallen by 10.2% from early this year, according to Fastmarkets' historical data. The slowdown in the downtrend was attributed to a reluctance of suppliers to reduce their offers, while some producers have halted production on cost pressures. An increasing number of Chinese antimony ingot producers have shown resistance to cutting their prices significantly further over the past week, arguing that the current price is far below their production costs, Fastmarkets understands. "We did not sell any volume [of antimony ingot] this week as we have stopped production," a Chinese antimony ingot producer said. "There...