Tin: Bearish short-term price risks still high

Dip-buying continues to keep LME tin prices fairly stable in the mid-to-high $20,000s. As this delays the still-likely sell-off associated with the beginning of the end of the Indonesian supply bottleneck, we turn our attention this week to the tinplate market, noting highlights from our Galvanized Steel and Tinplate Markets Tracker.

Chinese market in transition

In China, the tinplate market seems to be in transition. The steady decline in coil prices last year had given non-integrated tinplate mills a taste of higher margins and spurred them to increase output....