Zinc rose in London, narrowing this week’s drop, after an exploding meteorite caused damage at a Russian plant producing the metal.
A shock wave caused by the blast destroyed a wall in a concentrate warehouse at the Chelyabinsk Zinc Plant site and smashed windows in other buildings, spokesman Evgeny Ponomarev said today. The plant is working as usual, he said. Chelyabinsk Zinc produced 160,000 metric tons of refined zinc and alloys last year, according to the company website.
“Your immediate knee-jerk reaction is that this is potential supply being taken out of the market,” Nic Brown, head of commodity research at Natixis SA in London, said by phone today. “And then you spend time thinking, ‘How much impact does this have?’”