Secondary switch now a trend?

摘要

Availability of lead concentrate on the spot market continues to fall though the initiatives of traditional primary smelters to treat more secondary material seem to be offsetting potentially significant production cuts. Spot trade that is taking place in lead concentrates is virtually limited to purchases by Chinese smelters at TCs under 100 dollars/t but even they are struggling to find material. Chinese smelters imported 75,829 tonnes of lead concentrate in 2002 Q2 which is 8.3 percent less than the corresponding period of 2001. A seminar in China organised by Antaike addressed the move by some Chinese primary lead smelters into the secondary lead sector in an effort to survive the combination of low prices and expensive concentrates. This is similar to initiatives in the West but it is being constrained by a limited scrap pool.