Higher purchases by India, the world's second-biggest consumer, could lend support to global prices that are trading near their highest level in a week.

Company will combine its salt and potash businesses to make savings and target customers more effectively.

As North Korean imports of anthracite coal have waned with sanctions, those from Russia have soared.

Any cobalt sulphate prices published by CRU would be based on traded prices in China, a cobalt industry source said.

India's recent restrictions on the industry and increased smuggling took the sheen off the bullion market heading into the peak festival season.

The ban took effect from Sunday and restricts most companies and individuals from selling, transporting or burning coal in the urban area of Taiyuan.

Plans to reopen one of the world's biggest copper mines, shut by a civil war on the Pacific Island of Bougainville in 1989, have run into trouble.

After a 3 month suspension, Mali allows informal gold mining to recommence. The country exported over 16 tonnes of gold in the first 4 months of this year.

The ministry resumed exports of unprocessed minerals earlier this year and had started to roll out exports quotas in April.

Overall, September iron ore shipments from the world's biggest export terminal for the steelmaking raw material increased to 43.4 million tonnes from 42.8 million in August.

Mining ihas been one of the last sectors to use a surge in computer processing power, cloud data storage and complex algorithms to make sense of huge amounts of scattered information - routine in today’s retail and manufacturing businesses.

The country's chamber of mines and the ministry are locked in a number of legal disputes over the mining charter, which aims to increase black ownership and participation in the industry as part of a government drive to overcome apartheid's legacies.