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Gold/Mining/Energy : Mining News of Note -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: LoneClone who wrote (38473)	6/11/2009 8:29:32 PM
From: LoneClone	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 195465

ITRI report looks at tin market beyond the recession Release date: 10 Jun 2009 itri.co.uk For decades the tin market has moved from one crisis to another, and the current world recession is now raising new challenges for all stakeholders in the industry. In the short-term the market is again oversupplied, but in a few years the situation could change dramatically. ITRI’s Tin Annual Review 2009 analyses the impact of the global economic crisis on tin usage, production and investment in new mine projects and forecasts prices to 2013 in various scenarios. Some key points from the report are: * World tin usage peaked at over 360,000 tonnes in 2007, having grown at some 4% a year over the previous decade. However growth rates were slowing even before the onset of recession and demand dropped very sharply in the final quarter of 2008. A direct survey of consumers and an analysis of the relationships between tin consumption and economic and industrial activity points to a 10 – 15% drop in world tin consumption in 2009. ITRI is now carrying out a new survey of tin users to verify the short-term volume changes. * Although world tin consumption is forecast to start recovering in 2010, a strong bounce-back is only likely from 2011. A return to longer-term trend growth rates in 2012-2013 would result in annual consumption rising to 385,000 tonnes by the end of the forecast period. Almost all the growth in demand is likely to be in China and other emerging Asian markets, with both solder and tinplate usage increasing. * World mine production surged to an historical peak of over 320,000 tpy in 2005 and 2006, but has subsequently been declining. The fall has been accentuated by the global financial crisis, which has also caused delays or cancellations of new project development. In the long-run higher prices are needed to boost production to match trend growth in tin consumption. * Indonesian mine production has slipped from a 2005 peak of close to 140,000 tonnes to below 90,000 tpy. Although there is ongoing investment in new offshore dredging capacity, depletion of easily accessible reserves currently worked by small-scale miners is likely to result in a continuing decline in output. * There is a widening gap between China’s tin consumption and refined tin capacity on the one hand and local raw material availability on the other. National smelting and refining capacity is now in the order of 190,000 tpy, while production of tin-in-concentrates has reached a plateau of around 100,000 tpy. With hardly any major mine projects planned, China will be increasingly dependent on imports of tin metal or raw materials. * Outside Indonesia and China ITRI has identified committed and probable mine projects with combined annual capacity of some 38,000 tpy and possible projects with a capacity of around 35,000 tpy. However virtually no new projects will come on stream over the next three years and most of the ones identified are not economically viable at current prices.