Metals Rout Driving More Miners to Edge on Production Losses
- Prices at 6-year low means more production is making a loss
- More than two-thirds of nickel supply is now unprofitable
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To see how disastrous this month’s metals selloff has been, add up the output from one of the world’s biggest copper mines and two giant zinc projects.
This month’s drop means another 500,000 metric tons of copper are unprofitable, an amount similar to the capacity at Chile’s Los Bronces mine, according to Standard Chartered Plc. For zinc, an additional 800,000 tons of output is losing money. As metal prices hit new six-year lows, the losses at global mines keep adding up.