December 07, 2017 trading report www.mse.mn

On December 07, 2017, 541,517 shares of 15 firms listed as Tier I, II, and III were traded. 4 firms’ shares increased in price, 10 decreased and 1 remained unchanged. Standard Property Group JSC /BBD/ was the top performer, increasing 15.00 percent, whereas Tav JSC /TAV/ was the worst performer, decreasing 14.71 percent.

China-Mongolia Ties: Exclusive interview with Mongolian foreign minister www.news.cgtn.com

Mongolian Minister of Foreign Affairs Damdin Tsogtbaatar has just finished an official visit to Beijing. This is his first visit to China, since the establishment of the new administration. During his time in the Chinese capital, the minister took part in an exclusive interview by CGTN on China-Mongolia ties.

China coal-to-gas switch delayed to avert heating crisis www.bbc.com

The Chinese government has scaled back its ambitious plans to eradicate coal-fired heating for this winter amid shortage of gas.
Beijing had ordered the nation's northern provinces to convert from coal to cleaner fuel by the end of this year to reduce pollution.
However, in many places the transition has not completed or gas supplies proved inadequate,
Millions have reportedly been left without proper heating.
China's Ministry of Environment had issued a statement telling the northern regions that have not finished converting to gas or electric heating may burn coal, the South China Morning Post reported.
"Keeping people warm in winter should be the number one principle," the statement said.
Separately the Chinese National Petroleum Corp said on Thursday that the country might face shortage of gas if "extreme" cold weather hit the country.
As part of an ambitious plan to curb air pollution, the government started a coal-to-gas project that stretches across 28 provinces in the northern regions.
More than four million homes and thousands of factories have already set up gas-fired radiators, which has led to a surge of domestic gas prices to record highs since the start of the winter heating season in mid-November.

7th Burns Supper, the Scottish celebration in Ulaanbaatar www.mongolianbusinessdatabase.com

The 7th annual UB Burns Supper will take place on 27th January in the Kempinksi Hotel, UB. This event will be jointly hosted by the British Mongolian Chamber of Commerce and the Honorary Consul of Mongolia for Scotland. This year we celebrate the 55th anniversary of Mongolian British diplomatic relations.

IMF consultants assessing Mongolian Financial Regulatory organizations www.montsame.mn

Ulaanbaatar /MONTSAME/ The International Monetary Fund consultants Philip Johnson and Mimi Ho are working in Mongolia at the invitation of Chairman of the Financial Regulatory Commission S.Davaasuren. In the week of December 04-10, they will conduct a preliminary study for a project to strengthen capacity of financial regulatory organizations, assessing their current capacity and determining necessary technical assistants. 

Digital currency exchange NiceHash says bitcoin worth nearly $64 million hacked www.reuters.com

(Reuters) - Cryptocurrency marketplace NiceHash said the contents of its bitcoin wallet had been stolen in a security breach and one executive said nearly $64 million had been lost.

United Nations to implement a herder support project www.mongolia.gogo.mn

Minister of Food, Agriculture, and Light Industry B. Batzorig received United Nations (UN) Resident Coordinator and UN Development Program Resident Representative Ms. Beate Trankmann and other officials from UN agencies on December 5.

During the meeting, the Agriculture Minister noted, “When state policy focuses on improving the living conditions of herders and creating jobs in the provinces and soums, there are opportunities for young people to stay in local areas instead of moving to the city.” Ms. Trankmann introduced a 23 million USD grant to fund a project to improve living conditions for rural residents by enhancing their employability and decreasing poverty.

This is the breakthrough company of Mines & Money 2017 www.mining.com

Apart from gold’s big bugbear which some regard with such loathing they cannot bear to call it by name (starts with a b and ends in coin), the buzz at the 2017 Mines & Money conference in London was – unsurprisingly – around battery materials for the booming electric vehicle and energy storage market.

Presentation after presentation featured (often overly) optimistic forecasts about how the nascent industry will fire up already hot commodities like cobalt, lithium, vanadium and manganese, and how it will spur a new supercycle in copper and nickel.

But for your reporter, a company mining an ore for perhaps the most everyday commodity in mining – alumina – stole the show.

Granted, there is a connection with electric vehicles but the Perth-based junior is also addressing even faster growing markets.

What made the presentation of Iggy Tan, MD of Altech Chemicals who’ve also built a lithium company, particularly impactful is its simplicity.

Sapphire is formed naturally from aluminum oxide and is almost as hard as diamond. It is used in LEDs, cellphone and watch displays.

To make synthetic sapphire (its transparent – the gems are blue due to presence of titanium and iron) you need high purity alumina.

The current process to manufacture high purity alumina is inefficient.

Bauxite, the most common alumina ore, is refined to a smelter grade of 99.5% alumina which is then turned into aluminum metal only to be dissolved back into 99.99% (4N) alumina which is of sufficient purity to make sapphire. 4N alumina is also used to make anode/cathode separators in lithium-ion batteries.

ASX-listed Altech owns 100% of a kaolin deposit, a high grade aluminous clay, in Western Australia 130km from Perth’s Fremantle port. The company is bypassing the intermediate steps with plans to ship ore to a plant in Malaysia to produce 4N purity alumina.

Turning kaolin (which also finds application as a whitening agent) into alumina is a process first developed by the US Bureau of Mines in the 1980s.

The price gaps between different powders are stark. The smelter stuff sells for only $400 a tonne. For 99.9% (3N) alumina the price jumps to $7,000.

The 4N product Altech is targeting goes for an eye-watering $28,000 per tonne. And that’s the long-term contract price – spot prices in Japan for this level of purity recently hit $40,000 a tonne. Altech says its production cost is under $10,000.
It’s a small, but rapidly growing market. Global demand for high purity alumina was approximately 25,300 tonnes in 2016. Next year demand will top 34,000 tonnes. It is expected to grow at a rate of 16.7% through 2024 hitting nearly 87,000 tonnes six years from now.

From a 30-year (first phase) 1.2m tonne reserve grading 30% Al2O3 Altech’s ambitions are for a 4,500 tonnes per year alumina operation. That would catapult the company to the top spot compared to current producers led by Sumitomo Chemicals of Japan with just over 3,000 tonnes per annum.

Capital costs are a shade under $300m and Altech hopes to finalize a debt deal with a German bank (Germans are also building its plant in Malaysia with incentives from the government of the Asian country) next week. An off-take agreement with Japan’s Mitsubishi has already been signed.

IJF President and the President of Mongolia exchange awards www.ijf.com

The IJF President Mr. Marius Vizer and Mr. Battulga Khaltmaa, President of the Republic and of the Mongolian Judo Association, exchanged awards in Mongolia during a special visit this week.

Ex Volkswagen executive jailed in US amid diesel scandal www.bbc.com

A former Volkswagen executive has been sentenced to seven years in prison and a $400,000 (£298,778) fine, after admitting he helped the firm evade clean-air laws.
Oliver Schmidt, 48, is the second person to be imprisoned in the US over the diesel emissions scandal.
Volkswagen first admitted in September 2015 that it had used illegal software to cheat US emissions tests.
The scandal has cost it almost $30bn.
US prosecutors say Volkswagen installed special software in certain diesel vehicles that allowed them to perform better during emissions tests than they did under normal driving conditions.