Antimony moving up in South America

BEIJING (Asian Metal) 2 Apr 07 – Meanwhile prices and market is tight in Europe, the emerging antimony market in Brazil continued active as demand increase to feed its industry.
At close, participants priced antimony ingot at USD5,300-5,400/t CIF Sao Paulo and for antimony trioxide at USD4,700-4,800/t CIF Sao Paulo.
“I have just concluded a deal of 5t of antimony 99.65%min at USD5,300/t CIF Sao Paulo, and I have to respond to some more inquiries next week,” reported a trader to Asian Metal, “The market is getting back to a normal activity after a period of calmness driven by the automobile sector and the new factories opened with foreign capital.”
A great portion of the material used in Central and South America comes from Bolivia, that is estimated it has 1/6 of the global antimony resources, where the mining industry is in tumult after President Evo Morales reportedly said he intended to nationalize some portions of the mining sector. In February 2007 created a national corporation named COMIBOL. Asian Metal learnt from COMIBOL that the production of antimony in 2006 was of 4,434t, around 6.85% less than in 2005, but it is planned to recover the productivity, encouraged for the increasing demand from the international markets.