Tungsten

[oasdihf]

Rumors over Chinese exports lift US tungsten prices

New York (Platts)--10Aug2006
Rumors that export licences have mostly been used up by Chinese exporters
helped lift prices in the US for ammonium paratungstate.
A consumer said he had been offered material at in excess of $250/st and
turned it down, but other consumers and a producer put the market at
$235-245/st, which was where the Platts assessment was Thursday for US
imported material, up from $230-235/st the previous week. However, there was
no business reported, although one consumer said that other end users that had
not booked fourth-quarter material may struggle to secure supplies and will be
forced to look elsewhere.
He said that the export license expiration issue did not normally emerge
until the second-half of October. However, this year had been an exception and
was due to larger volumes exported from China, due to robust consumption in
Europe and North America. He predicted prices could go to $270/st by the end
of this year.
Another consumer said that he had also heard that Chinese licenses were
running out quickly, but doubted whether consumers who had not booked for Q4
delivery would necessarily be in trouble. "People may buy Q4 material and take
enough for delivery in the first few weeks of 2007 to tide them over until the
new liceses are issued. The timing of the new licenses all depends on when
Chinese New Year is." The first consumer said that a late Chinese lunar New
Year would make things worse.
Next year, Chinese New Year falls on February 18 and fresh import
licenses are unlikely to be issued before then, the consumer said. This year
it fell in late January.
But a producer said that while prices were going up and licenses were
likely to be fully used at an earlier point this year compared with last, he
did not think that everything was about to dry up suddenly. "Prices are
certainly moving up, but we haven't done anything specific," he said.
Meanwhile, there were also rumors that the major ore miners are getting
close to their maximum production quotas this year, which has also supported
prices of APT.
An APT consumer said that he had heard rumors that the main producer
Jiangxi Tungsten Group only had licenses to produce another 3,000 mt of
concentrate for the remainder of this year. "That would barely cover a major
ferrotungsten campaign," he said.
--Anthony Poole; [e-mail]

Online Source:
http://platts.com/Metals/News/9205081.xml?sub=Metals&p=Metals/News&