Chilean copper producer Codelco's board of directors has approved a $1.24 billion investment in the expansion of its El Teniente facility just south of the capital, Santiago, the state-owned copper producer said on Tuesday January 19.Those capital expenditures represent the total budget estimated for the Diamante and Andesita projects, and will be spent together with another $1.93 billion, already...Read More

RAPAPORT... Gemological Science International (GSI) has launched a service that tests lab-grown diamond jewelry for undisclosed natural stones, noting that mixing had become increasingly common."During our routine grading process for laboratory-grown diamond jewelry, our team of experts [has] come across natural-diamond melee mixed into lab-grown diamond jewelry," said Debbie Azar, the organi...Read More

RAPAPORT PRESS RELEASE, January 19, 2021, New York... The Rapaport Group has released its Diamond Price Statistics Annual Report for 2020, evaluating the performance of polished-diamond prices. The report provides an in-depth analysis of the past year's trends, and compares the price changes within specific diamond categories.The Rapaport Diamond Index (RDI?,,?), which tracks changes in the R...Read More

London Metal Exchange lead and nickel made gains close to 1% during the afternoon trading session on Tuesday January 19, with a lower US dollar index giving metals some space to recuperate their forward prices. Lead's three-month price was up 0.9% to $2,015 per tonne at 5pm, an increase from $1,996.50 per tonne on Monday. The metal had been on a steady decline since reaching $2,051 per tonne...Read More

The London Metal Exchange and its clearing house are revisiting a proposal to transition to a different way of calculating its clearing methodology. The exchange announced its discussion paper on the topic on Tuesday January 19. The last attempt was made in 2017 and was rejected by LME members because it would make the provision of credit lines expensive and result in the rapid withdrawal of...Read More

RAPAPORT... Diamond jewelry is the most desired tangible luxury product among consumers under the age of 40, second only to vacations, according to a survey by the Natural Diamond Council (NDC).The majority of demographic groups picked vacations as the luxury item they would most want to buy or receive if money were no object, the NDC said Friday. Female purchasers and male recipients were th...Read More

RAPAPORT... The American Gem Society's (AGS) annual Conclave will return this year, with a live event in Dallas, Texas.The event will take place from September 12 to 14 at the Sheraton Dallas Hotel, AGS said last week. The event was originally set to run in Louisville, Kentucky, in April, but was postponed due to Covid-19. AGS scrapped the 2020 edition altogether.AGS will feature peer-to-peer lear...Read More

RAPAPORT... Sales at Luk Fook slid in the third fiscal quarter as a slump in the Hong Kong market outweighed a recovery on the mainland.Group-wide same-store sales - at branches open for at least a year - fell 29% year on year during the three months ending December 31, the retailer reported last week. Same-store sales in China rose 4% as the country brought the pandemic under control and gold pri...Read More

A summary of Brazilian base metals producer Nexa Resources' operational figures for the fourth quarter and full-year 2020, as stated in its production report published on Tuesday January 19.In brief Output in 2020 was within the revised full-year guidance provided in May after the company was forced to close some Peruvian mines due to the Covid-19 pandemic. Mining production at Cerro Lindo, Atacoc...Read More

Covid-19 appears to have claimed another casualty: the London Metal Exchange ring trading floor. The closure of the floor, now entering its 144th year, has been proposed in a discussion paper issued by the exchange earlier on Tuesday January 19.The open outcry floor may be old, but it didn't appear to have serious underlying health issues. It has successfully fought back against talk it was set to...Read More

(IDEX Online) - Lucara has announced the recovery of an unbroken 341-carat diamond at Karowe in Botswana, bringing the mine's tally of stones over 200-carats to 54 since 2015.Earlier this month the Canadian miner had its lease on the deposit extended for 25 years, clearing the way for a major $500m underground expansion program.The top white gem quality diamond (pictured) was recovered over t...Read More

(IDEX Online) - De Beers has reportedly raised rough diamond prices by as much as five per cent at its first Sight of 2020.Insiders indicate that most of the increases affect stones over one carat, according to a Bloomberg news report. The scale of the price hike, described as the biggest in years, has surprised many within the industry. De Beers dropped its prices and started offering d...Read More

RAPAPORT... Diamonds Do Good (DDG) has named Rebecca Foerster as its new president. She will succeed Anna Martin, who is departing after a four-year term.Foerster, who is the president of Alrosa's US operations, was elected to the position after having served on the DDG board for 10 years and on its executive committee for the past four years, the organization said last week."I am very confident R...Read More

The London Metal Exchange is proposing the permanent closure of its open-outcry trading floor and the incentivization of greater liquidity on its electronic trading platform, LMESelect. The proposals, laid out in a new discussion paper on future market structure, also include potential changes to the exchange's margin methodology and the introduction of potential additional disclosures and policie...Read More

Additional price increases in the Brazilian flat steel market are possible due to the current low supply, but buyers are already cautious after a series of price gains, national flat steel distributors association Inda said."Steelmakers have their order books completely sold out until March, and some until April," Inda president Carlos Loureiro said.Some flat steel producers have announced 10% pri...Read More

Rebar buyers in the UAE have done deals this week at the higher prices announced last week, but there is little demand for billet imports because producers have ample stocks, sources told Fastmarkets on Tuesday January 19.And billet import activity is likely to remain slow for another week or two, depending on local demand for rebar, they added.Domestic rebarThe country's steel producers...Read More

Brazilian flat steel distributors have reported a 13.8% year-on-year increase in sales volumes during December 2020, with full-year 2020 figures rising by 6.6% over 2019, national distributors' association Inda said on Tuesday January 19.Distributors sold 288,000 tonnes of flat-rolled steel in December last year, up from 253,200 tonnes a year before. In 2020 as a whole, sales volumes were 3.62 mil...Read More

Some of the flat steel import prices in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Saudi Arabia decreased slightly over the past week amid lower offers and weak demand, sources said on January 19.Demand was weak in both countries because buyers were unsure of the direction of prices, sources said.India, one of the biggest exporters of flat steel to Gulf countries, did not send any new offer prices this we...Read More

Export prices for billet originating from the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) dropped on Tuesday January 19 amid lower offers and bid prices heard in the market, sources told Fastmarkets.Lower scrap prices and increased competition in the billet segment pressured prices downward, sources said.Fastmarkets' daily index for steel scrap, HMS 1&2 (80:20 mix), US origin, cfr Turkey was $451.40...Read More

Trident aims to fill valuable nicheSPONSOREDtrident royaltiesHis departure is scheduled for the end of March. Independent non-executive director Keith Marshall will act as interim CEO. Mather intends to remain on the board as a non-executive director.Read More