Expectations, page-113

Pirie has a lot to do with Nyrstar and it’s profitability + Pirie treats some of their zinc smelter’s waste and whether it can operate well may affect whether they can get their debt deal over the line and not go into bankruptcy. Given NCZ has a sales exposure to it would be of interest to some holders?

Did I say the whole zinc industry collapses? In fact, if you are a zinc smelter that doesn’t have a massive debt exposure or shutdown by environmental bodies you and is not extremely old one with high power/labour costs you should be doing well. However there is CURRENTLY not enough smelting capacity to treat all the zinc concentrates in the market - that is why TCs for zinc costs have blown out and the smelters can pick and chose which concentrates they want to buy and which they don’t want.

Converting zinc concentrates into zinc metal isn’t as easy as turing a switch on and hey presto...
It takes 2-3 years minimum to build a smelter in China (usually more like 4-5 years) and with their new environmental push it is not as easy to build a new smelter there compared to 10 years ago...
Refurbing a smelter can take 6-18 months depending on the age to comply with stricter Chinese regulations so pretty sure NCZ can’t wait 6-18 months for there to be greater balance in the concentrates market. There is a massive rush to be profitable NCZ now otherwise they run out of cash pretty quickly. 

Don’t take my word for the zinc concentrate market if you don’t want to - do your own research.