Riversdale Mining Ltd., an Australian developer of coal projects in Africa, signed an initial $800 million agreement with Wuhan Iron and Steel Corp. to build a coking coal mine in Mozambique’s Tete province, reported Wednesday’s Bloomberg.

Wuhan will buy a 40 percent stake in the Zambeze project and 8 percent of Riversdale, the Sydney-based company said in a statement. The deal values the project at $2 billion.

The Chinese steelmaker will have the right to buy at least 40 percent of the coking coal from Zambeze, Riversdale said. The Australian company also signed a logistics partnership accord with China Communications Construction Co.

The non-binding agreement “needs regulatory approvals as well as other necessary steps to be completed,” Wuhan Steel spokesman Bai Fang said.

Global supplies of coking coal will be crimped this year as Chinese imports near the 2009 record of 34.4 million tons, and demand from other nations picks up with the economic recovery, Teck Resources Ltd. said in March. Prices may reach $300 a ton in the second half, Citigroup said April 12.

Iron ore and coking coal are the two key ingredients in steel. Coking coal is turned into coke and used in blast furnaces.

Source : Konaxis

China’s second-largest wind turbine maker Xinjiang Goldwind Science & Technology said it shelved a plan to raise up to $1.2 billion in a share sale in Hong Kong because of deteriorating market conditions, reported Sunday’s Reuters.

« In light of the deterioration in market conditions and recent unexpected and excessive market volatility, the company …has formed the view that it would be inadvisable to proceed with the global offering at this time, » the company said in a statement.

The wind turbine maker planned to offer 395.3 billion shares, or 15 percent of the company, with an indicative price range of HK$19.8 to HK$23 per share.

Goldwind’s is the fifth Hong Kong IPO to be shelved since last month.

Source : Konaxis

A unit of China Railway Engineering Corp is buying a majority stake in a project to develop the vast Las Cristinas gold deposit in Venezuela’s southern jungles, minority partner Crystallex said on Monday, reported Reuters.

The Chinese company is the latest in a long line of prospectors drawn to Las Cristinas’ estimated 17 million ounces of gold. Red tape and legal cases have stopped legal extraction of ore from the site for more than 20 years.

Canada’s Crystallex purchased the rights to develop Las Cristinas several years ago, but has struggled to resolve a permit dispute with the leftist government of President Hugo Chavez.

« The Chinese provide both engineering and financing. And most importantly they are likely to have the protocol connection with the Chavez government in order to bring this project, which has been a stalemate, into production, » said analyst John Ing of Toronto-based Maison Placement.

China Railway Resources Group Co Ltd (CRRC), a unit of giant Chinese contracting and engineering company CREC, will own two-thirds of the new joint venture, while Crystallex will own the remaining third.

« CRRC and Crystallex have met with the government of Venezuela to apprise them of this strategic partnership and are very pleased by the government of Venezuela’s expression of support, » Crystallex said in a statement.

CRRC is also leading efforts to revive the stalled environmental permitting process for Las Cristinas, and will provide capital to develop the project to commercial production, it added.

Separately, CREC is constructing a $7.5 billion railway project in Venezuela linking southwestern Cojedes state and the eastern Anzoategui state.

Source : Konaxis

Baoshan Iron & Steel Co. is “not very optimistic” that stainless steel consumption growth in China will match last year’s rate, prompting increased use of cheaper materials to make the corrosion-proof steel, wrote Wednesday’s bloomberg.

Apparent consumption growth may be 5 percent this year on a possible slowdown in China’s property market and in the European economy, said Lou Dingbo, general manager of Baoshan’s stainless unit, without giving an exact figure or last year’s growth. Baoshan, China’s second-biggest stainless steelmaker, may use more nickel pig iron to make the metal this year because it’s more competitive than primary nickel, he said.

Nickel, used to help protect steel from corrosion, has dropped 22 percent from this year’s high of $27,595 a ton on April 16 on speculation European efforts to curb government debt will erode economic growth and China may step up measures to reduce asset bubbles. China, the biggest consumer, more than tripled production of the cheaper nickel pig iron in the first quarter, said Wang Chongfeng, a Shanghai Metals Market analyst.

Nickel pig iron is processed from low-grade ore known as laterites. It is an alternative ingredient to the refined metal in the making of stainless steel.

World stainless steel output jumped 55 percent in the first three months to 7.9 million tons from a year earlier, and will increase 20 percent to 31 million tons in 2010, the biggest gain since 1976, according to Macquarie Group Ltd.

Source : Konaxis

Solar panel maker Yingli Green Energy Holding Co Ltd reported a first-quarter profit, boosted by cost-cutting and a sharp jump in sales, wrote Monday’s Reuters.

The China-based company, like other makers of photovoltaic solar equipment, saw demand surge as the market rebounded from a weak 2009 and sales in Germany jumped ahead of a cut in financial incentives there.

Yingli’s gross margin doubled to 33.3 percent as the company cut costs in both its manufacturing process and polysilicon, its key raw material.

Net income was $28 million, or 18 cents per share, compared with a year-earlier loss of $20.7 million, or 16 cents per share. Excluding one-time items, earnings per share were 23 cents. Quarterly revenue rose 59 percent to $358.9 million.

Still, the weakness in the euro against the Chinese renminbi trimmed earnings by $24.8 million and pressured average selling prices for modules slightly in the quarter, the company said.

Yingli said it expected average selling prices to decline at single-digit percentage rates in the second quarter, based on its expectation for further weakness in the euro.

The company stuck to its forecast for full-year module sales of between 950 megawatts and 1 gigawatt.

Source : Konaxis

China’s Anshan Iron and Steel Group, also known as Angang, confirmed on Monday it would invest in a steel mill in the United States, reported Reuters.

The state-owned firm will gain a stake in a $175 million rebar facility now under construction in Amory, Mississippi after signing investment, technology and sales agreements with the Steel Development Company in New York on May 13.

The deal will need the approval of the Ministry of Commerce, which said Angang was likely to receive its backing.

Jia Yinsong, head of the raw materials department at the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, last week urged Chinese steel mills to make overseas acquisitions in order to circumvent trade barriers.

Chinese steel product exports fell almost 60 percent in 2009 as a result of the global financial crisis, and the China Iron and Steel Association has complained that the recovery this year is being hobbled by growing protectionism in Europe and the United States.

In April, the United States imposed 30-99 percent anti-dumping duties on Chinese steel pipe imports, one of 29 trade disputes involving Chinese steel makers since 2007, according to World Trade Organisation figures.

Angang, based in northeast China’s Liaoning province, has already completed a merger with Benxi Iron and Steel Group to form the Anben Steel Group, China’s fourth biggest producer with 29.3 million tonnes of output in 2009.

Source : Konaxis

Spanish wind turbine maker Gamesa is planning to enter China’s offshore wind power sector by the end of next year, a top company official said on Monday, reported China Daily.

Gamesa is currently in talks with a German wind power company for a possible acquisition, and will enter China’s offshore wind power market by the end of 2011 or the beginning of 2012 if the deal goes through, said Jorge Calvet, chairman & CEO.

If the deal does not take shape, the company has an internal plan to enter the sector during the same period, said Calvet.

Gamesa plans to bring its advanced 5-megawatt (mW) wind turbine to China, he said.

Meanwhile the company on Monday started building a wind turbine plant at Baicheng city in Jilin province, in line with its plan to tap into the fast growing wind power market in China.

China plans to build seven wind power bases, which will have 74 percent of the country’s wind power capacity by 2020. Wind power in Jilin is expected to account for 39 percent of the nation’s wind power capacity by then, 30 percentage points more than now.

Gamesa installed its first wind turbine in China in 2000, and has since sold over 2,000 turbines. The company employs around 1,000 people in the country.

China has chosen the sea off eastern Jiangsu province to build the country’s first batch of offshore wind power projects, according to the National Energy Administration (NEA). Public bidding for the four projects will start later this month.

Construction of offshore wind power projects will be the main focus of China’s wind power industry in the future, and the country boasts rich offshore wind energy resources, said Shi Lishan, deputy director of the new energy department under the NEA.

Source : Konaxis

China will levy countervailing duties of up to 31.4 percent on some chicken products from the United States, the Ministry of Commerce said on Wednesday, reported Reuters.

The ministry said subsidies the companies receive from the U.S. government had hurt the competitive position of Chinese companies.

The ministry said that those U.S. companies exporting white-feather chicken products and which had submitted information to its investigation would face duties of 3.8 to 11.2 percent, while those that had not complied with its requests would face the higher rate.

Starting from Friday, Chinese firms buying white-feather chicken products from the United States will need to pay a deposit to the customs authority in line with the duty, it said.

Source : konaxis

Lower-than-normal temperatures this spring have hurt China’s winter wheat crop while heavy mid-April snows could delay planting of corn in the largest area in the northeast, the government bodies said, reported Wednesday’s Reuters.

Drought in southwestern Yunnan, Guizhou and Guangxi regions since late last year could reduce rapeseed output by more than 400,000 tonnes and grains, mainly winter wheat, by 1.89 million tonnes, the agriculture ministry and top planning body said in a joint statement posted on the ministry’s website.

The drought losses accounted for a small percentage of China’s total rapeseed and wheat output. China produced 13.7 million tonnes of rapeseed and 115 million tonnes of wheat last year.

China’s northeastern areas, the country’s grain region, had the worst snow in decades late last year while lower-than-normal temperatures during the spring could delay corn planting by 7 to 10 days, it said.

The assessment came as Beijing agreed to offer more subsidies to wheat farmers as compensation for fertilizer costs. Beijing has also promised to pay higher prices this year for rapeseed.

China’s wheat imports have risen by a big margin since last year, partly driven by attractive international prices, although the country has sufficient stocks to meet most of the demand in the world’s largest consuming country.

Higher domestic corn prices have also prompted some feed mills to seek cheap imports, although many are still waiting for more favourable prices compared with imports.

Toward that end, the government last week started releasing large amounts from stocks to counter price increases.

Source : Konaxis

China has imposed countervailing duties on grain-oriented electrical steel produced in the United States, as well as anti-dumping duties against Russian and U.S. steel, its customs administration said, reported Monday’s Reuters.

U.S. producers will be assessed for anti-dumping duties of up to 64.8 percent, and anti-subsidy duties of up to 44.6 percent, it said on its website on Monday.

On Friday, the U.S. announced a final decision to impose stiff duties on Chinese-made oil country tubular goods, which are steel pipe used in the oil industry.

China is encouraging its steel industry to move up the value chain and produce more high-tech steel, but its increased exports of those products threaten lucrative markets for American producers. The steel used for petroleum pipes, for instance, must be particularly resistant to corrosive oil and gas.

Grain-oriented electrical steel, also known as grain-oriented silicon steel, is used for the cores of high-efficiency transformers, electric motors and generators.

China will impose anti-dumping duties of 7.8 percent on AK Steel Corp. and 19.9 percent on Allegheny Ludlum Corp., the two American producers that responded to its request for information. AK Steel faces anti-subsidy duties of 11.7 percent and Ludlum faces 12 percent.

It said Russian silicon steel producers OJSC Novolipetsk Steel and VIZ-Stal Ltd face anti-dumping duties of 6.3 percent, while others face duties of 25 percent.

Source : Konaxis