The Crucible: September 2024

  Dear MMTA Members and colleagues, Welcome to your September and LME Week edition of the MMTA’s magazine, The Crucible. LME Week 2024 The LME Week 2024 kicks off on…

The Minor Metals Trade Association is pleased to welcome three new members who joined the MMTA in September. Tungsten Vietnam JSC is a tungsten producer situated in Thai Nguyen, Vietnam. It…

EVs drive demand Annual global lithium-ion battery demand is expected to sur-pass 1 TWh (1,000 GWh) for the first time this year. Demon-strating the scale of growth in this sector,…

Battery chemical markets have faced a turbulent ride through 2024, with a downturn in lithium prices coupled with cobalt metal prices falling to and staying at eight-year lows. Slowing electric…

MMTA member Molymet, a major molybdenum processor and the world’s largest producer of rhenium, with headquarters in San Bernardo, Chile has launched production of highly spheroidised powders of rhenium, molybdenum…

Antimony prices have been on a rapid uptrend since Beijing announced the addition of antimony and some of its products to China’s export licensing scheme from 15 September, and with…

View from North America   Dear MMTA Members, Good afternoon from Cleveland Heights, Ohio this Labor Day. And it is quite stunning weather here: sun shining, not too hot and…

There has been a noticeable uptick in interest in niobium of late. In our view, this is worth pondering. Niobium is a rarely used metal, with annual consumption amounting to…

A robust Chinese domestic market is currently the only factor supporting molybdenum spot prices, with the European market failing to register any uptick in September since the return from the…

There are many issues facing world markets for specialty metals. Most of these markets are relatively small in size. They are not sufficiently large and liquid enough to have price…