From AOL c The Associated Press
Platinum and palladium futures rose sharply Tuesday on the New York Mercantile Exchange amid concern about continued delays in Russian shipments of the metal to Western suppliers.
On other markets, sugar futures retreated, while wheat futures advanced.
Russia is the world's largest supplier of palladium and the second-largest producer of platinum behind South Africa. But shipments to Japanese consumers, who use the metals in automobile and electronics production, have been halted since late last year amid repeated bureaucratic delays.
While the Russian export agency, Almaz, is currently in negotiations with Japanese manufacturers to resume shipments and set a schedule, market participants are growing increasingly nervous that this year will be a reprise of the previous year, when supplies became critically tight before shipping resumed in July.
The situation is being further complicated by long production delays from a new mine in Zimbabwe. That mine had been expected to produce 150,000 ounces of platinum a year, or 3 percent of the world's platinum supply, and 110,000 ounces of palladium, or about 2 percent of supply.
Platinum for April delivery rose $5.80, or 1.5 percent, to $388.50 an ounce, while June palladium rose $6, or 2.5 percent, to $246.25 an ounce.
Sugar futures neared the lowest level in four and a half years on the Coffee, Sugar and Cocoa Exchange in New York amid expectations that Brazil's expected record crop will add to already ample supplies.
Advances in sugar prices have been stymied by greater production in many of the large producing countries, at a time when demand from Southeast Asia has fallen sharply.
May sugar fell 0.11 cent, or 1.2 percent, to 9.39 cents a pound.
Wheat futures rose sharply on the Chicago Board of Trade amid fears a late-season cold snap had damaged the nation's winter wheat crop.
Investors feared that a winter storm that brought freezing temperatures to the nation's breadbasket would cause significant damage to crops that do not have significant ground cover to protect them from frost.
While agronomists from many key winter wheat-growing states said major damage was unlikely, nervous market participants noted the government currently is predicting one of the smallest wheat production figures in several years. Any damage could lead to tight supplies toward the end of the year.
Jim Herbek, extension grain crops specialist at the University of Kentucky, said at least half of that state's 750,000 acres of winter wheat were susceptible to damage from the frost. But agronomists in the major production states, Kansas, Oklahoma and Texas, say they believe damage there will be minimal and could even help by slowing maturation and leaving the crops less vulnerable to a spring frost.
''If anything, it's probably helped,'' said agronomist Brent Bean at Texas A&M. ''It will maybe help avoid injury later on from a freeze.''
May wheat rose 3 3/4 cents, or 1.1 percent, to $3.41 1/4 a bushel
AP-NY-03-10-98 1715EST
Transmitted: 03/10/98 17:25 |
