Farms in regions controlled by the Ukrainian government have sown 622,000 hectares to winter wheat for the 2023 harvest, or 16% of the expected area, the agriculture ministry said. The ministry did not provide a forecast, although Agriculture Minister Mykola Solsky told Reuters last month that the area could fall to 3.8 million hectares from 4.6 million a year earlier because of Russia’s invasion. Kyiv-based Barva Invest consultancy said last week the area sown to winter wheat could total around 3.4 million hectares, 10.5% less than the agriculture minister expected. ...

According to ICRA on Monday, the high price of coal will have a negative effect on the profitability of domestic non-ferrous metal companies that mostly work in the aluminium and zinc industries. Even if it has decreased recently, the domestic e-auction premium for coal still remains high at about 30%. Because there are fewer coal linkages to non-power sectors and higher coal prices in both the local e-auction and the foreign markets, domestic base metal industries’ power costs have dramatically increased in the domestic market, according to a statement from ...

When Queen Elizabeth II ascended the throne in 1952, global crude steel production stood at 212 million tonnes. By the end of her reign, in 2022, it had climbed to 1.9 billion tonnes – a dramatic increase of 800 percent. During the same time, annual finished steel use also rose, from approximately 85kg per head to around 233kg per head. In the United Kingdom, steel production peaked in 1970, following a 25-year upward trend in the period after the Second World War. Output has subsequently declined, with 2022 set to ...

Rising Supply Weighs on Prices in 3Q22 Malaysian benchmark crude palm oil (CPO) spot prices are at around USD800 per tonne (t), sharply lower than the year-to-date average of around USD1,300/t. Prices have dropped since June 2022, from over USD1,500/t, as increased exports from the world’s largest palm oil producer, Indonesia, have been supplemented by brighter market expectations of global vegetable oil supply. A sustained shortage of manpower in Malaysia, the world’s second-largest producer, has impeded output growth for the industry. However, we expect the situation to improve gradually and ...

Metals markets remain fundamentally in the “supercycle” identified in recent years despite the current global economic slowdown and fallback in prices, with demand for a wide range of metals to continue being driven by what is an “irreversible” global energy transition, according to Benedikt Sobotka, CEO of diversified miner Eurasian Resources Group. “The fundamental supercycle in metals is very much intact: renewables are metals-intensive,” Sobotka told S&P Global Commodity Insights in an interview. “Particularly in Europe the current energy crisis is only going to accelerate the energy transition: billions of ...

When aluminium hit its all-time high of $4,073.50 per tonne in March, it did so in direct reaction to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The market was pricing the potential loss of metal from Russia’s Rusal, which produced 3.76 million tonnes in 2021. Aluminium traders had seen this movie before back in 2018, when U.S. sanctions on Rusal’s owner Oleg Deripaska caused massive upheaval along the entire length of the global supply chain. This time around, however, there have been no government sanctions on Rusal’s aluminium in response to the Kremlin’s ...

Chicago wheat futures edged lower on Wednesday, shedding some of previous session’s strong gains, although losses were curbed by worries over supplies amid an escalating conflict between Russia and Ukraine. Corn and soybeans lost ground. “There is some support from fears that Russia/Ukraine war disrupts exports from the Black Sea, and also concerned with Russia’s threats to use nuclear weapons,” according to a Hightower report. “This support may be short-lived.” The most-active wheat contract on the Chicago Board of Trade (CBOT) was down 0.2% at $8.70 a bushel, as of ...

The Union government is preparing to set out area caps for mining as it aims to carve out smaller mining areas to attract more investors, two people aware of the development said. The move will also prevent vast tracts of land irregularly ending up with a few miners, which would undermine the very purpose of auctioning mineral concessions through a fair and transparent mechanism. All states will have to follow the area limits for various minerals including iron ore, diamond, bauxite, gold and copper while auctioning resources, and changes would ...

U.S. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack said on Tuesday that he continues to talk with Mexico about a looming Mexican ban on genetically modified (GM) corn and that 2023 will be important for getting clarity on the issue. A late 2020 decree by Mexico President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador would phase out GM corn and the herbicide glyphosate by 2024. Source: Reuters (Reporting by Tom Polansek, Editing by Franklin Paul)

Copper prices bounced on Tuesday as the dollar eased, but worries about global growth and demand due to interest rate hikes and climbing inventories still dominate sentiment. Benchmark copper CMCU3 on the London Metal Exchange (LME) was up 0.8% at $7,401 a tonne at 0957 GMT. It fell to $7,292 a tonne on Monday, a drop of 32% since hitting a record high of $10,845 a tonne in March and the lowest since July 21. “Markets are trading the macro at the moment and copper is no exception. Any weakness ...

Iron ore futures rose on Tuesday, with Singapore prices rebounding after two straight sessions of losses, as top steel producer China resumed ramping up output to cash in on increased construction activity during the September-October peak season. Benchmark October iron ore on the Singapore Exchange climbed 1.5% to a session high of $97.05 a tonne, while the September contract rose 0.2% to $98.60. On China’s Dalian Commodity Exchange, the most-active January iron ore contract DCIOcv1 ended daytime trade 1.1% higher at 718.50 yuan ($100.36) a tonne. Rebar output among the ...

China’s leading copper smelters have set the floor price for copper concentrate treatment and refining charges, or TCs/RCs, for the fourth quarter at $93/mt and 9.3 cents/lb respectively, the highest level in more than four years, industry sources said Sept. 27. The rise in TCs/RCs indicates that local markets have an elevated supply of copper concentrate, the sources said. Most Chinese smelters are holding high inventories of raw materials and demand in Q4 is projected to be lower than in Q3, they added. Treatment charges for copper concentrates have been ...

The European Union’s crop monitoring service MARS on Monday raised its projections for Russia’s 2022 wheat crop to a new record high, but lowered its grain maize crop forecast to take account of hot and dry summer weather. In a report, MARS estimated the Russian wheat harvest at 95.0 million tonnes, up from 88.8 million seen in its previous estimate in June, and now 25% above last year. That included 70.2 million tonnes of winter wheat, up 31% on last year, and 24.8 million tonnes of spring wheat, up 10%. ...

Shares of Coal India may have come off their 52-week highs, seen recently, in line with the weakness in broader markets, but returns for investors in 2022 still stand at more than 47%. As coal demand in the country remains strong, Coal India’s fortunes are being led by improving operating performance. Added to good domestic demand are firm global prices, which have helped realisations at the company’s e-auctions, thereby boosting earnings outlook. Coal India has also been impressing with its output growth, having already produced 159.75 million tonne during Q1 ...

Speculators’ optimism across U.S. grain and oilseed futures has returned to late June levels amid increased buying in Chicago-traded corn and soybean products, an uncommon trend leading into U.S. harvest. This year’s short U.S. corn and soybean crops and the ongoing tensions between Ukraine and Russia have only worsened global grain supply uncertainties, which have been prominent for two years now. But a potential slowdown in the global economy poses threats to speculators’ bullish grain bets. In the week ended Sept. 20, money managers lifted their net long position in ...