The Herd

I am due to go to Guinea next week but my colleagues in Conakry have told me that the Ebola virus which has killed about 150 people so far and half of that number since the end of April is still not yet under control.  I have been advised not to travel.  It is a … Read more

Is the Present the Key to the Future?

“If the present tries to sit in judgement of the past, it will lose the future.” – Winston Churchill Several western zinc mines have recently closed or are running out of ore quickly. Glencore recently announced that its zinc production fell 18 per cent to 306,000 tonnes as two of its mines have reached the … Read more

Revisiting the biggest gold swindle in history

Epithermal or Ephemeral? In March 1997 rumours that Bre-X had apparently not discovered gold at Busang in Indonesia staggered the markets.  The downward spiral began on March 18th as reports swept the world that Bre-X geologist Michael de Guzman was missing in the Borneo jungle and presumed dead after falling 240 metres from a helicopter … Read more

We love zinc

According to the prospectus for its $10bn initial public offering in May 2011, Glencore supplied 60 per cent of the international third-party market in zinc metal and 50 per cent of the international third-party zinc concentrates market.  This was before Glencore’s takeover of Xstrata was completed in May 2013.  To meet antitrust approval for the … Read more