in case of goldminers/refiners in the far east, think MIC.ax, think BacOx.
shares may be a little too much diluted, but at the moment its a bargain.
-nemo-
from http://www.minesite.com/storyFull.php?storySeq=702
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Date: April 27, 2005
Time to Concentrate.
By Rob Davies
The smart money has moved downstream. This is not a reference to lazy Sunday afternoons lounging on a river boat but a reference to where the focus of attention has moved to in the metals world. Metal prices have, more or less, stabilized at pretty high levels certainly in relation to the recent past. But not all the value in extracting metals goes to the miners. Their involvement usually stops after they have created a concentrate. In the case of copper this means taking it from ore containing perhaps 0.5% copper to an intermediate material that contains approximately 30% copper.
This is achieved by purely physical and chemical means relying on the properties of the mineral that contains the copper. The next stage of extraction requires that mineral to be broken down into its constituent elements in order to get the metal out. To do this requires considerable amount of energy because the molecular forces that hold minerals together are very strong. This force is usually applied in a smelter through the application of large amounts of heat. It is fundamentally very different from mining and these days is usually executed by stand alone companies that buy in the intermediate form, concentrate, and then sell the finished product, refined metal.
Because these companies have quite separate raw materials and outputs to the mining companies they dance to a slightly different tune. Their fortunes not only depend on metal prices, but on the free market price of treating concentrates and refining them to pure metals. This intermediate process is far less transparent than simple metal prices and is a function of the availability of concentrate and the amount of spare capacity in the smelting and refining industry. Last year, when concentrate was in short supply but smelter capacity was high, these charges were low as smelters aggressively sought material to feed their plants.
Now though, the tables have turned and miners are working at full capacity throwing out great volumes of concentrate to meet burgeoning demand. This large stock of semi-processed raw material means that smelters have no shortage of feed, but the industry capacity has not changed as fast. That allows them to raise their charges and capture a larger share of value in the extraction process. So currently share prices of smelting companies are doing better than those of pure miners. Experts say this should continue for another nine months or so before markets become balanced again.
It certainly seems as if the metal prices themselves have settled down after the turbulence of a week or so ago. Last week the net changes were modest. Copper rallied a little to close at US$3,410 / tonne, up US$83/ tonne. Aluminium gave up US$10/ tonne to close at US$1,868 /tonne but both zinc and nickel gained. Zinc added US$36 to finish at US$1,268 /tonne while nickel ended at US$450 /tonne better at US$16,245/ tonne. Smelting and refining charges are not usually publicly disclosed as they tend to vary from plant to plant..
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) mit ner goldmine aktive & scheinen jetzt noch kurzfristig auf den kupferzug aufspringen zu wollen. Sie haben wohl rund 700 Mio aktien draussen und liegen monmentan bei ca. 0,01 AUD.