Miraculous metal

Black China Blog

• About those rumours… July 17, 2015
  Last week on this blog we mentioned a rumour doing the rounds, that there were to be some cuts to aluminium production. Here’s what we said: “There are rumours that some SOE smelters are cutting production, but at this stage the rumours appear to be just that.” (Click on the quote to go to the […]
  Paul Adkins
• WA Bauxite strategy change? July 16, 2015
  A Western Australia online newspaper has today run a report that Alcoa may be in the middle of a strategy change for its WA bauxite. The Wa Business News (www.businessnews.com.au) reports that the recent trial cargoes of bauxite are a shift from the regular model of refining the material in WA. It points out […]
  Paul Adkins
• Hard to believe July 15, 2015
  China’s Q2 GDP came in at 7.0% on a YoY basis, according to the announcement this morning, compared to 6.9% for the previous cycle. On a QoQ basis, the number showed a slight improvement, lifting from 1.6% to 1.7%. Retail sales, fixed asset investment and industrial production indices also showed slight improvements. The GDP […]
  Paul Adkins
• Sacre Bleu! Goodness Gracious Me! July 14, 2015
  India’s Nalco Aluminium has announced an R&D Cooperation Agreement with Rio Tinto Alcan. The announcement carried almost no information or detail, just this photo of my former colleague Bernard Allais at the signing ceremony. I repeat the photo here in the body of this post, because without any facts about the proposed alliance, all that’s […]
  Paul Adkins
• Malaysian mining licences revoked July 14, 2015
  Reuters is reporting that 34 contractors in Pahang State in Malaysia have had their mining licences revoked. According to the report, that leaves only 11 operators with permission to mine bauxite in the area. Kuantan, the regional capital of Pahang State, is awash with bauxite – literally. When we were there 2 weeks […]
  Paul Adkins
• Vale Stephane July 14, 2015
  I have just been informed that Stephane Bostantzoglou has passed away. Stephane was as revolutionary as they come in the petcoke and calcined coke industry. It was Stephane who brought Chinese cokes to the rest of the world. I remember first meeting him in 2001 when he was visiting Australia. Stephane was talking […]
  Paul Adkins
• When is an export not an export? July 13, 2015
  China’s trade data was published today, and with it the preliminary information on exports of aluminium. According to the data, China’s exports of aluminium in all forms (unwrought, semis, alloyed and scrap) rose by 9.7% over May. (Some commentators got excited by the YoY number, which showed a 35% increase, but the boom in […]
  Paul Adkins
• China’s stock market – why it matters July 13, 2015
  The ups and downs of China’s stock market have caught the attention of the world press, and we here at AZ China have devoted a few blog posts to the subject. But one could reasonably ask, what’s it got to do with the aluminium and raw materials markets? Normally the equities market would have only […]
  Paul Adkins
• Managing the stock market – with Chinese characteristics July 12, 2015
  The fall in China’s equities market created news around the world, not just for the fall but for the actions taken by the Chinese government to prevent the fall. Those actions centred around last weekend, when leading stockbrokers were told to volunteer to buy shares, among other measures. It has now emerged that there […]
  Paul Adkins
• AZ China is hiring! July 10, 2015
  We are in the market for an analyst. We are looking for someone who understands the relationship between an industry and a market, who can look beyond data to see the real picture, and who expresses his/her views based on facts and understanding. Really, the most important qualities we are looking for are: Attitude, […]
  Paul Adkins