Archives for Commodities - Page 7
Diamonds were first discovered in South Africa in 1867. This and subsequent discoveries dramatically increased potential supply and put downward pressure on price. In 1888 Cecil Rhodes formed De Beers Consolidated Mines with the successful objective of forming a monopoly over diamond production. Dwaneng Diamond mine in Botswana, owned 50%…
Last week I described the relationship between gross metal value in a concentrate and the net percentage, which can be surprisingly low, of the gross that a seller will receive. You can read that article here. The following is a brief description of the forms in which copper is sold…
Many metals are concentrated after mining and the resultant concentrate is often sold to an appropriate smelter. Most concentrates comprise various sulphides, some of which carry the metal of value. Metals that are commonly sold as concentrates, often with several metals in a single concentrate, include copper, molybdenum, zinc, lead,…
Potash is a source of potassium, one of three three primary plant nutrients, the others being phosphorus and fixed nitrogen. Potash is an umbrella term for various soluble salts of potassium. The main salts are potassium chloride (KCl, also known as muriate of potash – MOP), potassium-magnesium sulphate (K2SO4.MgSO4, also…
In 2019 Blackrock Inc was criticised for the environmental impact of its holdings in oil and gas and coal. Blackrock is the world’s largest fund manager with UDS7 trillion under management. Last week it announced that it would be divesting all thermal coal stocks where coal was more than 25%…
High Purity Alumina is very pure aluminium oxide (99.99% Al2O3). Alumina is also known as corundum, with traces of iron, titanium, vanadium or chromium it forms sapphire and ruby. HPA is chemically inert, transparent, does not conduct electricity, has a very high melting point and is very hard. In pellet…