Tuesday, 4 August 2026
KINSHASA
A study circulating this week says cobalt shipments leaving the Democratic Republic of Congo for China may have carried up to 5,000 tonnes of uranium, riding along in hydroxide and concentrate destined for refineries that never contracted for it. The commercial consequence sits in the assay clause, not the geology: radionuclide limits are rarely specified in African cobalt hydroxide contracts, and any buyer or port authority that starts testing for them changes the documentation burden on every container. Cobalt itself did not move, holding at 56,290 dollars a tonne. Glencore, separately, announced a reshuffle of its Congolese management this week and repeated its commitment to Congolese leadership at the top of the local business.
NOVOROSSIYSK
Russia's grain exports fell by almost 38 per cent in July, the clearest arithmetic yet on what repeated strikes around the Black Sea coast have done to loading programmes. Two Turkish-owned civilian vessels were hit by drones near the Russian coast, with three crew injured on a cargo ship close to Novorossiysk, and Ankara has warned about escalation in a sea it depends on for both transit and grain. Chicago wheat read the supply loss as demand destruction and slipped 2.2 per cent to 648.75 cents a bushel. Jordan's 120,000 tonne wheat tender drew two participants, which is what happens when sellers cannot price freight and war risk with confidence.
NEOM
Air Products has finalised its marketing agreement with Yara for renewable ammonia from the 1.2 million tonne per year NEOM plant in Saudi Arabia, where Air Products is sole offtaker on a 30-year contract. Yara will sell into its existing global supply chain whatever Air Products does not crack into hydrogen, compensated on commission. The reading for anyone buying nitrogen: molecules originally earmarked for European hydrogen crackers can now reach fertilizer channels as ammonia, and Air Products says the deal reduces its need for downstream cracking investment, having taken no final investment decision on any of its planned northwest European crackers. First ammonia is possible in 2027, with a commissioning period the chief executive described as long.
AT SEA
The Baltic Dry Index rose 4.1 per cent to 2,843, the highest since 15 July, led by capesizes at 4,564, up 6.2 per cent, with panamax at 2,135 and supramax at 1,610. Iron ore flows disrupted by the Port Hedland strikes are still rearranging the Pacific. The freight strength arrived while Brent fell 6 per cent to 83.68 dollars a barrel, and while Singapore very low sulphur fuel oil rose again on tight supply, so bunker relief is not following crude down.
KINSHASA, AGAIN
The Congolese foreign trade ministry's reference schedule for 3 to 8 August puts cobalt at 55,622 dollars a tonne and copper at 13,689.20 dollars a tonne, up 0.2 per cent, gold at 131.84 dollars a gram, and cocoa down 4.5 per cent to 5.10 dollars a kilogramme. The copper reference works out near 6.21 dollars a pound while COMEX copper settled 3.2 per cent higher at 6.6505, so exporters valuing cargo off the official grid are booking duty on a number the market has already left behind. Government also plans to commit 13,538.6 billion Congolese francs, about 5.97 billion dollars, in the third quarter.
DEVELOPER DESK
Cloudflare has enabled inbound TCP connections and gRPC on Workers via Spectrum, forwarding sockets directly to Durable Objects and Containers, which brings protocol traffic such as database wire formats and gRPC services into the same platform as HTTP work. The same week brought a Billable Usage API returning cost and usage for Workers, R2, D1, Workers AI, Vectorize, Images and Stream from one endpoint, updated daily and broken out by product.