Treatment charges for lead concentrate rose in August on a strongly negative import arbitrage and a steep backwardation on the London Metal Exchange, market participants told Fastmarkets.
In addition, more mined material has become available to the Chinese market, which has been tightly supplied for the past three months.
Fastmarkets'
lead spot concentrate TC, low silver, cif China and the
lead spot concentrate TC, high silver, cif China were both assessed at 55-70 per tonne on Friday August 27. The low silver TC rose from $35-45 per tonne at the end of July, while the assessment for the high silver TC was up from $45-55 per tonne.
"There seems to be a lot of interest for high silver concentrate and there is still a decent margin on this product. The key here remains the freight rates, which are still quite high," one concentrates trader in Europe said.
Raw materials for lead smelters are in short supply, so despite a negative import arbitrage, smelters still have to seek material from abroad and the profit from byproducts is not...