Frabjous day for London Silver Summit

On a day the silver price burst back through the $15 mark, the London Silver Summit abounded with optimistic assessments of future and present silver mining projects.

LONDON -  The organisers of the very successful and well-organised Silver Summit meeting in London today could not have asked for better news as, at long last, silver began to make its upwards move, substantially outperforming gold in the markets - and gold didn't do too badly either!

With one speaker predicting that if gold broke through $15 it could run up to $25, the silver price almost immediately did the former breaking back up through $15 at around 1 pm London time and then moving up to around $15.60 in late trading. Its intraday increase was an amazing 6.3 percent up from the previous day's New York close. Gold only rose a still remarkable 1.9 percent on the same basis.

Silver has underperformed gold in the recent run up in the yellow metal's price, so to many observers the better performance of silver today was expected and long overdue.

Not surprisingly, some of the speakers at the Silver Summit - particularly those already producing silver - were far from unhappy with the situation, noting that the higher prices in general would go straight through to their bottom lines. Developers and explorers were pretty happy too in that better prices make capital raising that much easier as long as the prices are maintained.

The London Silver Summit is a one-day annual event (the first one was last year) and is an offshoot of the big Idaho Silver Summit. This year's event moved to a slightly larger venue and attracted 120 or more silver investors, analysts and institutional players (and Mineweb) who listened avidly to the presentations of a number of silver junior miners with good stories to tell (getting better by the minute as the silver price rose through the day) intermingled with several expert speakers.

Mexico dominated as a prime source for new mining activity. It is a country which runs high on the list of those where mining companies like to do business with a generally mining-friendly environment and good infrastructure. What is more highly prospective silver properties abound. Mexico used to be the world's top silver producer (it now trades places with Peru), but mostly from a host of small, but very high grade mines. But when silver prices dipped sharply, many of these properties were abandoned and the huge Mexican silver belt has now become bonanza territory for an array of large and small North American-based (mostly) miners, developers and explorers which are mostly focusing on old mining properties on silver left behind by the old miners. This, by almost any other standards, would nowadays frequently be classified as high grade material.

The generally bullish outlook on the silver price was boosted by the frequent reports from the day's market. It was pointed out though that silver industrial demand remained strong despite the decline in photographic sector demand (which is also, of course, leading to a decline in scrap supply from this source too). One speaker pointed to a potential market - for silver-zinc batteries which are showing considerable promise in the high capacity sector. Should these come to replace lithium-ion batteries in mobile phones and laptop computers the impact on the silver industrial market - which already accounts for 45 percent of consumption and rising - could be considerable.

SUBSCRIBE to Mineweb.com's free daily newsletter now.

SHARE THIS ARTICLE

Print story      Email story      Subscribe to free newsletter
OTHER PAGES:  GOLD NEWS EUROPE AND MIDDLE EAST

Back