Also in December, the prices of non-ferrous metals see a downward trend: the contraction in prices continues to remain constant without any hint of recovery.

Aluminum manages to mitigate the downward trend that began in mid-October, closing with a -2% ($ 2645 / ton). Same negative fate for copper, which drops to 9,404 dollars a ton with a loss of -4.5% compared to the past month.

According to the Chilean mining company Codelco, the largest copper producer in the world, the 2022 forecast for the red metal is not optimistic. The future political implications in Chile and Peru will have a decisive impact on both the domestic copper sector and the global market.

In any case, as in November, the general decline in prices is mainly due to the collapse in the cost of coal in China. The effects of the containment policies adopted by the government, in fact, were immediately felt with a tightening of the stock exchange rules for the negotiation of the prices of the most important products.

Even if slightly, zinc also undergoes a decrease: in mid-December, there was a negative variation of -0.8% ($ 3,400 / ton).

Finally, as regards nickel, after the high of $ 21,125 / ton on November 24th, new declines are observed which reach lows never reached in the last two months. The prices on 20th December at the London Metal Exchange (LME), in fact, stood at $ 19,360 per ton, with a decline of 8.4% on the previous month.