Gold price goes up… and then slightly down

The most active gold contract on the Tokyo Commodity Exchange, February 2012 , inched up after an earthquake of magnitute 8.8 struck the north coast of Japan, while the rubber contract for August 2011 barely moved, dealers said on Friday.

The Wall Street Journal writes that Tata Steel Ltd. expects its raw material costs to increase around 15% in the next fiscal […]

A landslide Saturday near Freeport McMorran's Grasberg mine left thousands of workers stranded, but was not expected to impact operations at the world's largest copper mine, a company spokesperson told Reuters: A weekend landslide buried a key road access tunnel to Freeport-McMoRan Copper & Gold Inc's Grasberg mine in Papua, Indonesia, leaving thousands of workers stranded, but a company spokesman said operations were continuing as normal. Freeport is the world's largest publicly traded copper miner, while Grasberg has the world's largest recoverable reserves of copper and the largest gold reserves.

Newcrest today reported a staggering intersection of copper gold - 883 metres grading 2.15% copper and 2.23 grams/tonne gold at its Wafi-Golpu project. The project is part of the Morobe Joint Venture with Harmony Gold of South Africa and Wafi-Golpu is seen as the next project to develop after the now established Hidden Valley gold project in the Morobe region.

The massive Oyu Tolgoi copper-gold project in southern Mongolia is now expected to produce an average of more than 3 million ounces of silver annually during its first 10 years of commercial production. In a news release Thursday Ivanhoe Mines CEO Robert Friedland said "Oyu Tolgoi will rank as a very substantial silver producer when commercial production begins in 2013."

Kazakhmys, the world's 10th largest copper miner, was confident the long-term outlook for copper remained positive as a surge in prices drove its full-year profit higher. Kazakhmys said on Thursday its 2010 earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation (EBITDA) rose 59.5 percent to $1.93 billion. According to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S estimates, the average EBITDA forecast stood at $1.86 billion.

De-seasonalised demand for gold is likely to shoot up in India as agriculture income in the country soars. Farmers primed to invest […]

Japan's Ministry of Finance data reveals drop in refined copper exports to 26,208 tonnes. TOKYO (Reuters) - Japan's refined copper exports fell 45 percent in January from a year earlier to 26,208 tonnes, for a fourth straight month of year-on-year

The Anglo-Australian company wants to benefit from higher prices for steel-making coal, the business daily said, adding steelmakers oppose the switch, fearing frequent price changes would make production costs more volatile.