Ironbark Zinc (ASX: IBG) director Adrian Byass has increased his stake in the company through an on-market purchase, providing a vote of confidence in its operations.
Byass increased his indirect stake by purchasing 200,000 for $10,110, or around $0.05 a share, and now holds around 10.5 million shares.
Analysts are predicting that zinc prices are likely to increase as the oversupply in the market shrinking sharply this year to around 50,000 metric tons or less. That would be less than half the surplus forecast by The International Lead and Zinc Study Group.
In fact one analyst goes further, opining that there may not be any surplus at the end of the year in 2013. So in 2014, zinc prices could rise placing Ironbark Zinc in a very favourable position with its Citronen Zinc-Lead deposit in Greenland.
Over 13 billion pounds of zinc and lead have been identified at Citronen.
Ironbark therefore is one of the few remaining zinc stocks on ASX and provides exceptional leverage to a rallying zinc price.
China's demand for zinc
Zinc is already the fourth most used global metal, but where the China story plays out is that the country uses around a quarter of the quantity of zinc used by Western brands.
How this breaks down is that China galvanises 4% of the steel it produces, far less than the 18% average used in the Western World.
Inevitably, China will increase this amount when they target export markets and strive to meet Western standards.
The usage of zinc has around half for galvanising metals used widely in the construction, roofing and vehicle industries, followed by brass and bronze (17%), alloying (17%), zinc semi-manufactures (6%), chemicals (6%) and the remaining four per cent in various sectors.
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