Zinc and lead smelter Nyrstar is ambivalent over changing dynamics in the zinc concentrates market, playing down attempts by Teck Resources in the past month to lower its reliance on long-term smelter partners.
Teck, the market's main seller of annually contracted zinc concentrates, imported 1,000 tonnes of zinc concentrates from its Red Dog mine to China for the first time.The company is taking advantage of a 2017 change in Chinese customs policy for imports that switched 0.30% cadmium content limits from "mandatory" to "recommended.""[But] any tonnage of Red Dog that goes into China displaces another tonnage that then...