World’s central banks want more gold as India joins spree

“There is a new level of prices for iron ore globally,” Tito Martins, Vale CFO tells analysts in a conference call Friday.

Declines in Chinese rare earth export prices coming off 2011's record highs have been stark. But this year some light REEs have halved again and some heavies are now almost $2,500/kg cheaper.

Anglo-Australian diversified miner Rio Tinto announced today it has completed the formation of its joint venture with a group led by China's Chalco, subsidiary of state-owned aluminum giant Chinalco, to operate the Simandou iron ore project in Guinea.

A disease all-too-familiar to early coal miners from Europe and North America has found its way to China- where technology for making coalming safer is still decades behind the West.

In 1992 in the junior mining sector, nobody was paying attention to diamonds. Then Lac de Gras was discovered. Within four years, there were 200 diamond exploration companies. Twenty years later, there are six junior companies still in the game. The REE junior space will be similar, but in a shorter timeframe.

Diversified miner BHP Billiton (NYSE:RIO) today became the third iron giant to join the new China Beijing Metals Exchange (CBMX), only a few days after competitors Vale (NYSE:VALE) and Rio Tinto (NYSE:RIO) did the same.

In another attempt to reduce its dependence on China's strangehold on rare earth element supply, Honda announced that its dealers will start to recycle old cars to extract the rare earth metals from the nickel-metal hydride batteries.

In a supply risk index of chemical elements that are of economic value, four elements placed ahead of rare earth.

Copper prices will continue dipping but only until the middle of this year, at which point they should start rising again, according to the latest Thomson Reuters’ GFMS Copper Survey and members of the industry.