✦ LIBER ✦
Rio Tinto’s talc earnings level, but TiO2 feedstock business suffers from oversupply & overstocking
- Publisher
- Elsevier Science
- Year
- 2003
- Weight
- 32 KB
- Volume
- 2003
- Category
- Article
- ISSN
- 0969-6210
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✦ Synopsis
Realised selling prices were on average up by 1% in 4Q 2002, compared against 4Q 2001. They were 4% up on the average level of 3Q 2002, indicating that the downward drift in TiO 2 pigment prices has been arrested. Capacity utilisation was 96% in 4Q 2002, based on worldwide nameplate capacity of 690,000 tonnes/y. Millennium believes that TiO 2 pigment sales in 1Q 2003 should be about 142,000 tonnes -the same as the level achieved for the final quarter of 2002. Previously announced price increases are gradually being implemented, resulting in better average profitability.