South Korea’s highest court rejects appeal from zinc smelter against shutdown
The fate of the 400,000 metric ton-per-year smelter, the world's sixth-largest, has been closely watched as zinc prices soared 17.5% this year.
BHP Billiton (ASX, NYSE:BHP) (LON:BLT), the largest mining company by market capitalization, sees potash as a key commodity in which to base its future growth despite prices are still hovering just above $210 a tonne, less than a half what they were only five years ago.
“Our preference long term is to grow in oil and copper, then possibly potash,” the firm’s chief executive officer Andrew Mackenzie said when releasing first half of the year results Tuesday.
BHP seems to be in no rush to advance its massive $2.6 billion Jansen potash project in Canada’s Saskatchewan province. For years the company has been sinking shafts and installing some infrastructure on site, but has not fully committed itself to the project, nor received board approval for the mine.
BHP’s massive $2.6 billion Jansen potash project in Canada’s Saskatchewan province is now 64% complete.
On Tuesday, the company showed once again how slowly the project is advancing by saying it is now 64% complete (it was already 60% along six months ago).
“Excavation and lining of the shafts are steadily progressing,” according to BHP’s results for the first half of the 2017 financial year. It added that the engineering contract for feasibility studies for stage 1 of the project had been awarded.
When the work is completed – at the current pace towards the end of 2019 – Jansen would still be nowhere near a producing mine. That is expected to happen sometime “in the decade beyond 2020,” BHP has said.
But once and if that finally happens, Jansen would be a game-changer in the potash industry, as it is expected to generate 8 million tonnes of crop nutrient a year, which would amount to nearly 15% of the world’s total.
Prices for fertilizers began their decline five years ago as weak crop prices and currency declines pinched demand forcing producers to lay off employees and close operations.
Prices have also suffered from increased competition following the breakup in 2013 of a Russian-Belarusian marketing cartel that previously helped limit supply.
And while they have slightly recovered this month, a potential move by the Indian government to cut potash subsidies by 17% in the next financial year would hit demand from one of the world’s largest importers of the fertilizer, inevitably dragging prices down.
3 Comments
patentbs
Game changer is right! 8 million tons per year of uncommitted low cost supply. There are several projects in various stages of permitting right now and all of them are not being aggressively pushed. Good reason for that.
SnakePlissken
And all that Potash needs to go to the Middle-East ‘deserts’ and re-establish the soils so that those 2 BILLION (Muslims) can stay there and feed themselves – instead of immigrating into Europe and America. Some of that was done in Israel and the Arabian Peninsula, but they need much, much more, and, they need to be sterilized after 2 kids. They do NOT have the right to occupy the entire planet – just because they figured out how to breed – every animal knows how to breed – breeding is an animal process – there is NOTHING human about breeding. Stop the madness. Stop immigration.
The USA is losing 2,000 acres per day of the world’s best farmlands to Urban Sprawl – all due to immigration. Stop the madness, stop immigration.
Khan
You are mentally sick