2014: : Gone but not forgotten

• Autores: Siobhan Lismore-Scott
• Localización: Industrial Minerals, ISSN 0019-8544, Nº. 568, 2015 (Ejemplar dedicado a: Enero)
• Idioma: inglés
• Texto completo no disponible (Saber más ...)
• Resumen

  • The bearishness has not just been felt in industrial minerals. Indeed, it is often the case that trends in other markets reverberate through and reach industrial minerals. A study conducted by CRU, a consultancy, found that miners had lost "hundreds of billions" in revenue over the year, attributed to falling commodity prices. Tracked in the study, which was publicised in London's Financial Times (FT) in December, was iron ore, thermal coal, metallurgical coal, metallurgical coke, phosphate rock, potash and bauxite.

    Growth in demand for proppants for hydraulic fracturing (fracking) has also spurred on mineral developments in this endmarket worldwide. In 2014, this meant that leading industrial minerals producer Imerys invested in a proppants plant in the US to serve the booming "shale gale" revolution sweeping North America. Elsewhere, companies like US Silica and Fairmont Santrol invested heavily in a logistics network, as demand continued to grow, but bottlenecks became problematic.

    Other companies were not lucky enough to turn their fortunes around in 2014. For junior lithium producer Galaxy Resources, 2014 will be remembered as the year it sold its Chinese lithium carbonate plant to Sichuan Tianqi Lithium Industries following the shutdown of its Australia-based hard rock mine. For RB Energy, worse still, it will be remembered as the year it was forced to initiate bankruptcy proceedings.