Russian metal company,Norilsk Nickel, has said it is planning to reduce production in 2012 to adapt to a slight fall in global metals demand,

In an interview to a Russian TV channel, the CEO of Norilsk Nickel,the world’s largest producer of nickel and palladium, has said that it also expects to report a net profit of around $5 billion in 2011

“Copper prices are holding up, nickel is much worse but not at critical levels,” the CEO said .

“Unfortunately for us there will be a slight reduction in metals production in the coming year, but our investment programme is to restore production in coming years and then increase it,” he added.

As metal prices tend to fall due to weakining industrial and manufacturing demand, mining companies are heavily exposed to a slowdown in global economic growth.

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With US$20.427 billion exports in 2011, Taiwan’s machine industry has made among the list of the country’s top-five export industries .

The machine industry has replaced sectors like information communication technology (ICT), iron and steel to secure a place in the top-five export sectors.

Export value for the ICT and iron and steel industries came to US$19.8 billion and US$19 billion, respectively in 2011. Taiwan’s top-five export industries, in descending order, were electronics, petrochemical, plastic products, optical and medical health, and machinery in 2011.

Thanks to the effects of the cross-Taiwan Strait economic cooperation framework agreement (ECFA), C.C. Wang, president of the Taiwan Association of Machinery Industry (TAMI), predicted domestic machinery industry will see a 10% annual growth in either production or export value and become the island’s third industry in 2012, with annual production value reaching over NT$1 trillion, only behind semiconductor and TFT-LCD (thin film transistor-liquid crystal display) sectors.

According to customs-cleared statistics compiled by the TAMI, Taiwan exported NT$51 billion worth of machinery in December 2011, up 4.3% from the preceding month and up 7.6% year-on-year.

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India’s machine tool industry has sought a ‘Machine Tool Technology Development Fund’ with a corpus of Rs 1,000 crore from the country’s central government.

Vikram Sirur, president, Indian Machine Tool Manufacturers’ Association, said that in order to grow at a compounded annual growth rate (CAGR) of 15 per cent in the next five years, the Indian machine tool industry needed to create new capacities and that requires high technology. Indian machine tool makers lack the technology to improve their product portfolio, and to get technology need to tie up with overseas companies. Sirur said.

He said, the key enabler for achieving the desired growth rate is to set up a technology development fund to support product development. The machine tool industry in India was overburdened with high interest rates, making it difficult to borrow funds from the banking sector to expand capacities. Unlike China where the interest rates are in the range of 2-3 per cent, Indian industry has to pay more than 14 per cent which makes it unviable, Sirur said.

During 2010-11, the Indian machine tool industry saw a turnover of Rs 11,650 crore with the domestic production of Rs 4,096 crore. For 2011-12, it is expected to grow 10-15 per cent. For 2012-13, the IMTMA has estimated the industry to see a turnover of Rs 13,500 crore. Shailesh Sheth, media chairman, IMTMA, said IMTMA is organising the second edition of IMTEX Forming, an international exhibition on machine forming in Bangalore from January 19 to January 24 at the Bangalore International Exhibition Centre (BIEC). Touted as the biggest b2b exhibition, IMTEX Forming will have 450 international exhibitors from China, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Holland, Italy, Japan, UK and USA among others.

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A leading metal company in the US, Alcoa Inc., has said it will
cut down its global aluminum smelting capacity by 12 per cent.

Like other metals companies, Alcoa,too, has been hit with higher
raw material and input costs such as energy, which the company
said it must get under control.

With metal prices plummeting, the largest US aluminum
maker,Alcoa, says it is mulling to close or curtail about 531,000
tonnes of capacity to help improve profit margins and stay
competitive.

Aluminum prices have dropped 27 per cent as compared to 2011 due to lesser global demand in manufacturing and construction, partly due
to debt troubles in the United States and Europe.

Besides, low growth in China, one of the world’s largest commodity
consumers, has also led to uneven demand for Aluminum, used in a
slew of products from cans to airplanes.

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Because of the decrease of the industrial demand amid weakening global trend, Base metal prices fell by up to Rs 5 per kg in the local non-ferrous metal market.
After base metals softened in global markets, the sentiment turned bearish as Fitch Ratings said it may cut the credit ratings of European nations and the worst performance this year was posted by China’s property prices, as shown by the data.
On the other hand, at the London Metal Exchange, copper for three-month delivery showed a decrease by 2 per cent.
The other causality of the decrease in industrial demand was the damp trading sentiment.
Copper mixed scrap and nickel (4×4) fell by Rs 2 and Rs 5 to Rs 378 and Rs 1,050-1,052 per kg, respectively in the national capital.
Besides, Zinc ingot, lead ingot and lead imported traded lower by Rs 2 each to Rs 118-124.50, Rs 124 and Rs 122 per kg, respectively

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For possible downgrade, Moody’s Japan KK has placed its A2 senior unsecured debt ratings on Nippon Steel Corporation as well as the Baa1 rating on its SPV’s preferred securities under review.

The main reason behind the review is the increased concerns over delays in the recovery of NSC’s financial metrics. Moody’s view that there will be a continued and possibly intensifying imbalance of supply and demand in the global steel industry and that as a result, NSC is likely to experience stagnant profitability even with the culmination of its proposed integration with Sumitomo Metal Industries Limited has led to the premise of this expectation. The integration received a nod of approval by the Japan Fair Trade Commission, recently.

In order to get the evidence of synergies including any enhancement of global competitiveness achieved by merging their global production systems and any increased cost competitiveness, the integration of NSC and Sumitomo will be continuously monitored by Moody.

The impact on earnings and cash flow of the current conditions affecting the steel industry and its impact of NSC’s ability to improve margins and reduce leverage will constitute the main focus of the review.

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In order to stop the increase of metal theft in rural areas, a countryside organisation has thrown its weight behind moves to get cash taken out of scrap metal dealing.
Metal Theft (Protection) Bill proposed by Graham Jones MP which aims to stop cash payments for scrap metal, is getting full support from the Country Land and Business Association (CLA), and has welcomed the Government’s plan to establish a £5million national taskforce to tackle metal theft.
“Stolen metal is being traded too easily within the scrap metal industry. Hundreds of CLA members have been victims of metal theft, with some losing thousands of pounds by repairing and replacing stolen lead and other metals. Thefts from heritage buildings are particularly expensive for owners to replace because local authorities and English Heritage have to agree on suitable alternatives,” said CLA President Harry Cotterell.
It was announced, earlier this month that in the North East new measures to combat the increasing problem of metal theft were being introduced.

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As per the recent economic data from China, the world’s largest consumer of aluminum and copper, fall of 0.49% to 4.11% at 15:13 IST on BSE was witnessed by nine metal shares.
Hindalco Industries (down 4.11%), Sail (down 3.65%), Sterlite Industries (down 3.58%), Sesa Goa (down 3.05%), Tata Steel (down 2.56%), Jindal Steel & Power (down 2.47%), JSW Steel (down 2.32%), Bhushan Steel (down 1.78%) and Hindustan Zinc (down 0.49%), edged lower.
Underperforming the Sensex, which was down 0.92% at 15,713.20, the BSE Metal index was down 1.58% at 9,882.14.
Falling by 9.89% as compared with the Sensex’s 6.38% decline, the BSE Metal index had underperformed the market over the past one month until 24 November 2011.on the similar lines, falling 14.85% as against 2.62% slide in the Sensex, the BSE Metal index underperformed the market in past one quarter.

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With the risk sentiment picking up and euro getting strong, the metal markets are rebounding in a commodity-wide rally on Monday.
Friday’s close showed that one-week highs have been posted by both spot gold and the London Metal Exchange’s flagship three-month copper contract, with gold rallying 2.3% to $1,720.77 a troy ounce and up by 3.5%, copper peaking at $7,480 a metric ton.
With the euro getting a strong footing as the week began, the metals rose as equity markets. The factors responsible were, softening Italian bond yields, reports of a new credit facility by the International Monetary Fund and a strong start to the U.S. retail sales season, known as Black Friday.
Possessing wide industrial applications and viewed by investors as “risk” assets, metals are affected by the economic news.
FastMarkets.com analyst James Moore said: “The positive start to equities and speculation EU officials will contain the region’s debt problems have bolstered sentiment across the metals spectrum.”

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A good performance overall was witnessed by China steel industry as domestic crude steel output increased by 9.7% YoY, finished steel output was up by 13.4% YoY and ferroalloy output rose by 23%YoY, revealed data released by the China Iron and Steel Association.

In October, down by 390,000 tonnes, China’s steel exports totaled 3.82 million tons, while its steel imports totaled 1.2 million tonnes down by 130,000 tonnes both Mom. Furthermore, a total net profit of CNY 235.2 billion increasing by 32.3%YoY, was witnessed by China’s steel industry in the first nine months of the current year.

The net profits of the ferrous metal mining & dressing industry and the ferrous metal smelting and rolling industry out of the overall figure, respectively reached CNY 72.5 billion and CNY 116.6 billion up by 55.2%YoY and 21.3%YoY.

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