London Commodity Markets: November 2012

Molycorp Directors buying own shares could signal Rare Earth Elements come back

Directors of rare earth mining giant Molycorp put their money where their mouths are last week, snapping up stock in the NYSE-listed company. The insider buying, which involved President and CEO Mark Smith, EVP and General Counsel John Ashburn and Director Charles Henry, follows August’s punchy $25m stock purchase by Chairman of the Board Ross Bhappu.

London Commodity Markets - The need to rapidly increase production

Rare earths light homes and superdomes, freeway signs and cigarettes. They play multiple roles in phones, computers, windmills and cars. They ease the pain of cancers in the bone, and they're sometimes the treatment itself. They can betray infinitesimal clots in the smallest arteries, and, as independent of morality as Prometheus' flame, guide Hellfire missiles to their ultimate, deadly end.

China's rare earth elements export restrictions are helping form new alliances

China's restriction of global access to its deposits of rare earth elements starting in 2010 changed the status of these materials in the global economy, creating new diplomatic alliances across Asia and increasing the importance of mining in trade agreements.

New Company aims to extract Rare Earth Metals from Coal Fly Ash

Neumann Systems Group has another plan to make coal-fired power plants more environmentally friendly.
In the end, that plan could equal 250 high-tech jobs, $400 million in construction projects and $150 million in sales.

Old airplanes find an afterlife as recycled rare earth metal resource

Aircraft makers are increasingly turning to retired airplanes as a source of metals and other materials that can be recycled, possibly to fly again in new generations of aircraft.

photo: Megan Wolff/Iowa State Daily

The U.S. Department of Energy Ames Laboratory has been working to improve the recycling process for rare earth metals, which are important for energy technology across the world.

photo: http://thediplomat.com

Japan is to diversify its sources of rare earth metals away from China and expects to get half its supplies of the elements from countries other than China from the middle of next year, Trade Minister Yukio Edano said on Monday.

London Commodity Markets takes a closer look at China

Although the geographical size of China is perhaps not that difficult for North Americans to appreciate, their population is another matter. As China has become the second-largest economy in the world, it is without question transformed into an enormous force in the world’s commodity markets; so much so, in fact, that the recent commodity supercycle is now generally seen as a byproduct of China’s emergence.

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