Thornton pointed out that the supply/demand balance was impacted last year by a lack of Western roasting capacity.

"With the recent upturn in Western molybdenum production rates during 2004 and 2005, we saw a concentrate conversion bottleneck occur as existing Western roasting capacity could not keep pace with the surge in Western concentrate production," he said.

The end result is that some excess concentrate was sent to China for processing, he explained. This was possible due to a production disruption in China, he added.

Additional Western roasting capacity did come on line in the middle to latter part of 2005 and more is planned for 2006 and 2007, Thornton said.

Additional global by-product production also is expected this year, along with increased Western roasting capacity, he said.

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