8,639 yuan
China's sulphur benchmark moved from 8,289.25 to 8,639.25 yuan a tonne, a 4.2% day and roughly 1,290 dollars a tonne at the crossed rate. Sulphur does not usually do 4% days on its own account. It does them when buyers in Chinese phosphate country start pricing in a problem at the loading end, and the loading end for the marginal tonne is the Gulf: Jubail, Ras Laffan, Ruwais, all of it moving through the same strait that the IEA this week blamed for coal demand rising 1.2% as gas prices climbed. DAP sat still at 800 dollars a tonne and urea barely twitched at 450.25, so the phosphate chain has not yet passed the raw material along. Anyone holding unpriced Q4 sulphur commitments out of the Gulf is now short a market that has decided to move without them.
4.82 against 3.14
Two American fuel futures went opposite ways on the same session. Ultra-low sulphur diesel rose 5.5% to 4.8196 dollars a gallon, about 1,509 dollars a tonne; RBOB gasoline fell 3.4% to 3.1427, about 1,122. Brent underneath them gained 6.4% to 104.21 a barrel. The August American inflation print, published the same morning, showed consumer prices up 0.4% with gasoline supplying over a third of the rise, which is a photograph of a market that has since turned. The summer driving season is finished and the heating and freight barrel is the one being fought over. For import-parity buyers in East and Southern Africa the relevant number is the diesel one, and it is now the wrong side of 1,500 dollars a tonne.
Seven provinces
Ebola reached Sud-Ubangi, making it the seventh Congolese province with a confirmed case, after a patient at Gwaka. In Ituri the staff manning the Ebola screening points on the Iga-Barrière to Nizi axis walked out over pay, which is the part that touches cargo: screening posts are also where trucks queue, and an unpaid post is an unpredictable post. Kinshasa has separately been notified of a sit-in outside Parliament on 15 September. None of this has moved a tonnage number yet. It is the second time this year that a health cordon has become a de facto customs event in the north-east, and hauliers pricing Ituri and Haut-Uele legs should be quoting the delay, not absorbing it.
42,940 dollars
Cobalt eased 1.7% to 42,940 dollars a tonne while a new bidder circled the source. The Turkish trader BGN is looking at Congolese cobalt as it builds out a metals book, into a market where concentrate exports are banned outright and hydroxide moves only against quota. A trader entering a quota market is buying relationships and allocations rather than tonnes, which tends to firm the offer side at the mine gate before it shows up on any screen. Glencore's former head of oil, meanwhile, pleaded not guilty in London to two bribery charges, with trial set for 2027.
226,000 ounces
Tharisa closed close to 300 million dollars for Karo, the Zimbabwean platinum project whose first phase is designed for 226,000 ounces of PGMs a year. The financing lands in the same week BMI cut its platinum and palladium forecasts on shrinking car sales and recovering South African supply, with Sibanye-Stillwater restructuring a loss-making shaft and facing a strike in Montana. Zimbabwean ounces arriving into a forecast being cut is a timing question for the lenders rather than for the metal.
Also printed. Sugar #11 settled at 19.23 cents a pound, up 6.2%, as Maharashtra's private mills chased 492 crore rupees of unpaid interest subsidy and Solapur growers warned of a short cane crop. Namibia's Dâures green fertiliser project got a development funding agreement from SDG Namibia One and Enersense. The Baltic Dry held 3,521 on our panel against a reported 3,507, with brokers calling it the best dry bulk stretch in five years. COMEX copper fell 2.7% to 6.554 a pound after Washington's refined-copper tariff decision was reported as still unmade, and Escondida's July output dropped 22.1% to 89,400 tonnes. Gemfields banked 29.6 million dollars at its first emerald auction in nine months. Indian rice export prices hit a one-year high.