Australia’s Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union (CFMEU) has said it will launch a Federal court bid to block Rio Tinto from moving Australian workplace agreement workers into a five-year agreement before the Fair Work Act becomes law on 1 July.
Under the new agreement hundreds of miners would lose their right to bargain for [...]

Three workers were killed in an accident at the weekend while unloading raw materials from a ship at a Nippon Mining & Metals-operated copper smelter in southern Japan. The miners died on Saturday from what is believed to be a shortage of oxygen as they were unloading copper concentrate bound for the company’s Saganoseki [...]

Canada-based Centerra Gold’s operating licenses at its Boroo mine site in Mongolia have been suspended for three months by the Minerals Resources Authority (MRA). The MRA has reportedly accused Centerra of improper operating procedures and incorrect record keeping and land use at the site, located 110km west-northwest of capital Ulaanbaatar. The license [...]

The collapse of a planned $19.5 billion equity tie-up between Chinese state-owned aluminium giant Chinalco and Anglo-Australian miner Rio Tinto will not harm Chinese-Australian commercial and trade relations, a Ministry of Commerce spokesman said on Monday. Rio walked away from the deal with Chinalco earlier this month and instead proposed a $116 billion [...]

The Ministry of Environmental Protection has decided to suspend approval for steel projects in Shandong with immediate effect for their violation of regulations on the environmental protection.
These projects include hot rolled sheet/strip technical reforms belonging to Rizhao Iron and Steel and a five million t/y steel plant at Weifang Iron and Steel.
They failed [...]

China’s top aluminum producer Chinalco, parent of Chalco, said it is still considering participating in Rio Tinto’s USD15.2 billion share placement, and no decision has been made.
     Chinalco is mulling plans for joining Rio’s rights issue but hasn’t made the final decision, the company president Xiong Weiping said Thursday at his first news briefing [...]

In view of the rebounded nickel price, it is marked to see how the production of nickel contained pig iron in China moves. The quantity of nickel ore stocked at wharves in Chinese ports as of the end of 2008 was estimated to be 8 million tonnes but the above stocks of nickel ore are [...]