The Manifest, 26 October
COPPER, Highland Valley, British Columbia
Teck Resources confirmed its workers walked out at the Highland Valley Copper mine on Monday, the union pressing for better wages and pensions after warning the site is struggling to attract skilled labour. Teck says the hit to output depends on how long the stoppage runs. COMEX copper barely blinked, sitting at 14,424 USD/t, which suggests the market has not yet priced a long shutdown into the curve. Meanwhile the traders sitting between mine and smelter had a good year regardless: desks across copper, gold and silver are reporting record profits as concentrate markets stay tight.
COBALT, Kinshasa
Congo's government has removed the head of SAEMAPE, the state body charged with supervising and formalising artisanal mining, as part of a wider crackdown on the artisanal sector. No replacement has been named and no new export quota has followed, but the timing lands as Kinshasa keeps tightening its grip on the cobalt that runs through every hand before it reaches a battery plant. Cobalt itself held flat at 34,620 USD/t.
CRUDE, Lamu, Kenya
Dangote's planned refinery on the Kenyan coast is shaping up to be one of the country's largest-ever infrastructure bets. The project is priced at 16 billion dollars for the Lamu site, and the reporting is candid about the financing and logistics hurdles still standing between announcement and first barrel. Nothing here moves the petroleum products book today, but a refinery of that scale, if it clears those hurdles, resets East African product flows for a generation.
FREIGHT & FUEL, benchmarks
Brent climbed to 111.93 USD/bbl, a 2.9% jump that pulled both diesel to 1,517 USD/t and gasoline to 1,134 USD/t along with it. Bunker costs on every corridor just got a touch more expensive. Dry freight moved the other way: the Baltic Dry Index slipped 32 points to 2,628, even as the capesize segment of that same index has been recovering steadily through the week. Mixed signals for anyone pricing a Panamax against a capesize fixture this week.
Hold
Flanders is putting 22 million euros behind Vynova's chlor-alkali plants while the Belgian producer works through a financial squeeze. In Chile, a court ordered pre-trial detention for suspects in a copper-theft ring at El Teniente running since 2024. Codelco and BHP also signed off on a 40 million dollar joint hunt at the Anillo prospect in Antofagasta. And Chinese sulphur eased to 843 USD/t, down 1.8% on the day, a quiet number worth filing for anyone pricing the next Gulf urea cargo.