Actually, Australia should be panicked about coal

Sandvik Mining and Construction and Shandong Energy Machinery in Xintai, Shandong Province, China, have signed an agreement to form a 50/50 owned joint venture for the production and sales of coal mining equipment. The joint venture is expected to be established within six months, following customary regulatory approvals.

No word yet from China's Jinchuan Group as to whether the company is officially in the market for Canada's Lundin Mining. Canadian media reports claim a consortium headed by Jinchuan, which includes sovereign wealth fund China Investment Corp., was planning a takeover bid for the Canadian base metals miner.

The months-long saga over the future of Lundin Mining took another interesting twist on Friday, when a consortium of Chinese companies jumped in with a potential bid, according to a story in The Globe and Mail. Lundin has been the target of two takeover bids, the first by Inmet Mining, which recently fell through, and the second by Equinox Minerals, which unveiled a $4.8 billion hostile takeover bid to counter the Inmet offer. That deal was derailed when China's Minmetals Resources tried to acquire Equinox, which has since been acquired by Barrick Gold, which presented a richer offer worth $7.3 billion.

Chinese police said they have shut down a Hong Kong-based diamond-smuggling ring, in three months of arrests and confiscations. Twenty eight people were arrested between January and March and diamonds worth $31 million were confiscated, making it one of the largest busts in diamond history.

Russia's two main rail lines into Asia and, in particular China, are increasingly overburdened which is causing a headache for metals firms looking to increase exports.

Japan's imports of rare earths from China rose 40 percent in March from the previous month, Ministry of Finance data showed, with some observers saying demand is so far unaffected by last month's devastating quake though the outlook remains murky.

TNG Ltd (ASX: TNG), which recently released a positive scoping study review of Mt Peake said today it had a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with a major Chinese engineering and development company. It was also now in discussions with other potential funding/development partners.

China has called on central and provincial authorities to stop approving the construction of new aluminium smelting capacity as over-capacity in the industry is expanding. Nine ministries and departments jointly issued an urgent circular reinforcing Beijing's policy to restrict aluminium capacity expansion. The circular was published on the website of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology on Wednesday. (www.miit.gov.cn). Picture, a German aluminium coin from the time of the hyperinflation, is from Images of Elements.

Platts reports the Chinese government is planning to categorize coking coal as a strategic resource that will be “protected” via incentives to […]