DEEPER DEFICITSView full article...

DEEPER DEFICITS
View full article here..https://www.itri.co.uk/index.php?option=com_zoo&task=item&item_id=2614&Itemid=149

The tin market is the only one of the six main industrial metals on the LME with a deficit forecast for 2013.

According to a poll of analysts by Reuters, its deficit is estimated to be 2,970 tonnes this year and widen to 4,189 tonnes in 2013.

The shortfall could get deeper, because small-scale mining in locales such as China, Indonesia and Bolivia, which accounts for nearly 40 per cent of global mine output, is expected to decline in coming years as easily accessible deposits run out.

At the same time, few new bigger mines are due to launch production.

"There are many deposits but few real projects with economics that seem viable," John Sykes, director of Greenfields Research, said.

Many new mines have low grades of ore, which hikes costs. At a grade of 0.5 percent, a typical open pit mine would need a price of $25,000 a tonne to just break even, and an underground operation would need about $40,000, ITRI said.

Three-month tin on the LME has gained 18 per cent since late October to around $23,000 a tonne but is still down about a third from a peak of $33,600 touched in April 2011.

Peter Kettle of ITRI expects prices to reach $35,000 to $40,000 by 2015, a gain of 50 to 75 per cent.

A more bullish view comes from Mark Thompson, executive chairman of private firm Treliver Minerals, which is seeking to revive tin mining in Britain. He said prices would go as high as $100,000 per tonne due to the funding difficulties and resulting shortages, before settling at $40,000 to $60,000.

"Very few projects I look at, and I'm also on the board of Eurotin so I'm talking about our projects as well - none of these things work at $20,000, none of them are financeable," said Thompson, who co-founded Galena, the hedge fund arm of commodity trader Trafigura.

Warren Hallam, managing director of Metals X, warned that the tin market could behave like the rare earths market, where prices skyrocketed on supply fears when China imposed export controls and then later tumbled.

"It'll always be subject to manipulation because it (tin) is the tiniest of all those markets. It's a miniscule market compared to the copper market," Hallam said.

A spike in prices, however, could curb demand in the long run by spurring consumers to find alternatives, Kettle said.

"This is all still dependent on a continual growth in consumption of a couple per cent a year. If the price does go to $100,000 a tonne, then you will get a lot of substitution."

View full article here..https://www.itri.co.uk/index.php?option=com_zoo&task=item&item_id=2614&Itemid=149

Looming world shortages in both Tin & Tantalum predicted.

GIP = Tin, Tantalum & high ceramic grade Feldspar as a by product.