Mining industry braced for pullback

HudBay Minerals Inc., the third-best-performing Canadian mining stock this year, is willing to spend as much as 20 percent of its C$1.97 billion ($1.97 billion) market value on deals to replenish its development pipeline. The copper and zinc producer, which expects to more than quadruple copper output by 2015, will capitalize on a “buyers’ market” for mining assets as small companies struggle to raise funds and larger competitors consider sales, Chief Executive Officer David Garofalo said yesterday.

David Pinsen submits: About Alloy Steel International

A prefabricated six-story hotel, once destined to house BHP Billiton Ltd. workers, is sitting in 126 boxes stranded on the Melbourne city docks. The stalled project is a sign of the deepening global slowdown in mining. The contents were to have been assembled 1,990 miles away at Port Hedland, where BHP planned to use the hotel as temporary housing for its estimated US$22 billion harbor expansion to export more iron ore. That was before the world’s biggest mining company scrapped its plan, and the hotel developer went bust.

BHP Billiton Ltd., the world’s largest mining company, is targeting an 18% cut to capital spending in fiscal 2014 as part of an industry-wide drive to boost returns from investment. “We need to squeeze returns from our installed infrastructure,” Andrew Mackenzie, the new chief executive officer of Melbourne-based BHP, said Tuesday in notes for a speech at a conference in Barcelona. “Capital and exploration expenditure for the 2014 financial year will decline significantly, to approximately US$18-billion.”

By Valuentum: Over the past several weeks, the diversified mining sector has been under attack, as Vale (VALE), BHP (BHP) and Rio Tinto (RIO) have seen their share prices decline considerably.

By Income Hunter:BHP Billiton (BHP) is the world's biggest miner. Recently, it planned to expand on its current operations. This growth plan, however, costs $80 billion. As a result of the high cost, the company's chairman elected to put a stop to the expansion plans. BHP seems to be in a bit of trouble.

By David Pinsen:Alloy Steel International (AYSI.PK) is a nano cap company headquartered in Western Australia that uses a high tech, proprietary process to manufacture protective wear plates for mining equipment. The image below, from the company's website, shows a front end loader bucket with Alloy Steel's Arcoplate wear plating installed.

World Market Pulse submits:In what was seen as a relatively quieter quarter for the mining industry has turned out to be one of the most interesting quarters with mining industry news emerging from across the globe, which has the potential of changing long term strategies for the industry as well as the short term and long term investors and funds.