Data: SHFE, DCE market movement (Jan 24)

The State Council Information Office held a themed press conference under the series "A Good Start to the 15th Five-Year Plan" to brief on promoting the safe, efficient, and sustainable use of natural resources.According to the officials present, breakthroughs in mineral exploration have delivered encouraging results. From January to August, China's newly added recoverable reserves included nearly 70 million mt of oil and 610 billion m³ of natural gas. The Chating copper-gold mine in Anhui and the Zhugongtang lead-zinc mine in Guizhou each recorded newly added resources at a super-large scale.

The Zimbabwean government announced on Tuesday that it has reached a financing agreement for upgrading the Chirundu border post on the border with Zambia, aiming to ease logistics delays on this key corridor connecting the Central African copper belt with southern African ports. Zimbabwe's Ministry of Transport and Infrastructure Development said in a statement on Tuesday that the agreement between the Zimbabwean government and private-sector partner Chirundu Border Consortium has cleared the way for construction of the project.The Chirundu border post, which opened in 2009 as Africa's first "one-stop" border post, is a key hub on the North-South Corridor, handling freight operations between the ports of South Africa and Mozambique and the Zambia-DRC copper belt.Freight passing through the post includes copper, cobalt, fuel, mining equipment, chemical reagents, fertilizers, and other bulk commodities, with trucks frequently facing bottlenecks and long delays.

Why Is SHFE Copper Entering a High-Premium, High-Backwardation, High-Price Market?