Japan Official Zinc Price Continues Surging

Mitsui Mining & Smelting announced on Tuesday the firm raised official zinc ingot price by 33,000 yen to 577,000 yen per tonne for domestic shipment in November. The price continued surging since marking record on October 10 thanks to much strong zinc market at overseas. The monthly averaged price became to 572,100 yen.Zinc spot price at London Metal Exchange jumped up by US$ 80 to US$ 4,420 per tonne at settlement on Monday from previous trading day. Zinc inventory held by LME decreased by 1,625 tonnes to 101,350 tonnes on Monday, which became to a quarter from the beginning of 2006. Speculative purchasing became stronger when the inventory might decrease to below 100,000 tonnes and LME spot price marked records for 3 trading days in a row.Japanese official zinc price was 269,000 yen per tonne at the beginning of 2006 and marked record at 471,000 yen on May 21 following surge of overseas zinc market. The latest price is still higher by over 20% than the level on May 21. With surge of the official zinc price, Japanese market price of new cutting brass scrap is also increasing, which is the material for brass bar containing copper at 65% and zinc at 35%. The price increased by around 10 yen to 680-690 yen per kilogram on Tuesday from Monday at trading price among dealers in Tokyo.