The three-month copper price was trading above $6,000 per tonne at the London Metal Exchange’s close on Tuesday July 18, supported by a weaker dollar, which is trading at a 10-month low.

Meanwhile, Comex copper prices were hovering around the previous settlement in trading, with Monday’s surge unable to build momentum despite the depressed dollar.

The mining industry has experienced plenty of hardship but is coming out the other side with a scarcity of supply and a positive demand growth picture that will see metals prices rise on average by about 10%, according to the chairman of Vedanta Resources.

In the iron ore market, prices moved up after Rio Tinto lowered its production guidance for the year.

Moreover, Russia’s largest iron ore producer, Metalloinvest, has launched a 1.80-million-tpy hot briquetted iron (HBI) production facility in the country’s Belgorod region.

In the steel market, Russia’s Magnitogorsk Iron & Steel Works (MMK) has started up a continuous hot dipped galvanizing (HDG) unit with a capacity to make 360,000 tpy, increasing MMK’s overall HDG capacity by almost 20%, the company said.

Brazilian flat steel producers ArcelorMittal and Gerdau will follow Usiminas’s move and increase their domestic prices for hot rolled coil (HRC), according to Carlos Loureiro, president of national flat steel association Inda.

The Nigerian government has received "more than ten unsolicited expressions of interest" in an acquisition of its troubled Ajaokuta steel mill complex, in the south-central state of Kogi, it said last week.

Cobalt metal production at Chambishi in Zambia has dropped as a result of lower-quality feed exports from Boss Mining in the Democratic Republic of Congo, leading the owner of both operations, Eurasian Resources Group, to buy cobalt metal, sources have told Metal Bulletin.

Avon Specialty Metals has acquired the European distribution rights for USA-based Thompson Creek’s rhenium products.