Asian Metal meets Gladstone Resources and Rainbow Rare Earths

On the 8th October 2013 Asian Metal London analyst, Mark Moore, met with Michael Taylor, owner of Gladstone Resources SPRL and marketing consultant for Rainbow Rare Earths Limited whilst Michael was in London attending events hosted during the LME week. Michael explained he had been in the metal market for the majority of his working carrier and worked with Umicore specialising in cadmium and then moving to the ICdA prior to starting up Gladstone Resources. Gladstone resources is devoted to providing the knowledge and experience of dealing with commodity trading too small to midsized miners in Central Africa specialising in tin concentrates, tantalum and rare earth ores.

Michael explained the ores from Central Africa are some of the highest purity in the world with much of the tin concentrates being in the range of 50-60%, but noted that Africa often lacks the infrastructure to enable the effective development of the mineral resources. Michael advised that in recent years there have been a lot of issues over minerals and ores coming from conflict areas and concerns that money from their sale is funding wars in Central Africa, which led several larger companies to stop purchasing Central African products. Mark asked if the conflict free tagging system had change the situation and Michael noted that this has given confidence to some of the big companies who consider buying certified products, but noted it is a struggle to keep on top of the certification as warzones continue to move and mines are some of the key targets in the conflicts.

Michael explained the tin concentrate market remains steady despite the reduced processing in Indonesia at present as Indonesian tin smelters use domestic tin concentrates. He expects demand for central African tin concentrates could increase in the short term if the Indonesian government continue to restrict the tin producers, as buyers will have to look to other smelters. Michael also explained that Peru is likely to see severely reduced output of tin over the next few years as mines are depleted which could lead to higher dependencies on central African reverse before the end of the decade.

Michael noted the quality of the news, information and pricing guides from Asian Metal and confirmed many of his Chinese customers will use Asian Metal’s pricing guides for their benchmarks when negotiating contracts for a range of products.