Africa’s copper industry is poised for growth in 2025, with the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and Zambia – the continent’s largest producers – leading market expansion. Both countries are investing in new production mines, mineral exploration campaigns and the modernization of existing facilities to increase output.
Source – Sweet Crude Reports
Peru’s mining ministry on Friday said copper output in 2024 amounted to 2,736,150 metric tons, down 0.7% from 2023. The drop marked the copper giant’s first decline after four straight years of recovery following the pandemic.
Source – Mining.com
Legislation introduced in the House March 10 seeks a two-coin program for 2027 commemorating the 25th anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the United States. The issue date is a year past the anniversary, to avoid conflicting with the semiquincentennial initiatives.
Source – Coin World
The footage played at their trial at Oxford Crown Court showed two vehicles driving across the Great Courtyard, before hooded individuals armed with sledgehammers and a large crowbar broke into the palace. One could be seen leaving carrying a golden toilet seat.
The fully functioning lavatory was insured for the sum of $6m (£4.8m), the court heard previously.
“They knew precisely where to go, broke down the wooden door to the cubicle where the toilet was fully plumbed in, removed it, leaving water pouring out of the pipes, and drove away,” prosecutor Julian Christopher KC said previously.
“Clearly such an audacious raid would not have been possible without lots of preparation”, he added,
Source – BBC
I will follow this till the end of the trial. I want to know what happened to the toilet! Maybe you do too. Clearly had to have been planned and to have done it so quickly, from the video evidence anyway. Let’s see what happens. -V.
The London Metal Exchange three-month price has risen every day in January and is now up 4.0% from the start of the month, making copper the early outperformer of the LME base metals pack.
Dwindling stocks and China’s rising import appetite have rekindled optimism that the country is finally turning an economic corner.
Fund managers are unconvinced, with investors’ long positions only marginally ahead of bearish bets on both the CME and LME copper contracts.
The Yangshan copper premium , a closely-watched gauge of China’s import demand, is currently at a one-year high of $75 per ton, indicating China is still hungry for metal.
Source – Reuters
Platinum demand outpaced supply by 995,000 ounces last year. That was 46 percent higher than forecast.
Meanwhile, platinum jewelry sales grew by 8 percent in 2024, and investment demand took off, rising by 77 percent.
The WPIC forecasts that jewelry demand will reach 2 million ounces this year, an increase of 2 percent year-on-year.
Source – Money Metals
Freeport’s last export permit expired at the end of 2024, but the company has requested it can continue selling copper concentrate abroad because its local copper smelter was in repair after a fire in October last year.
“The trade ministry supports a plan to relax the export policy after weighing the cost and benefit analysis … while also observing the sustainability of the government’s natural resource downstreaming policy,” deputy minister Dyah Roro Esti said in a statement.
Freeport Indonesia said that it’s currently negotiating with the government over the export permit and believed the government “would accommodate” it.
Source – Mining.com