Zinc & Lead Concentrates

Sphalerite concentrate at 48–55% Zn and galena concentrate at 55–70% Pb with silver — priced on payable metal less treatment charges

Zinc and lead concentrates come out of the same mines and are sold on the same logic as copper concentrate — payable metal at the LME price less a treatment charge — but with a different set of numbers on the sheet. Zinc concentrate from sphalerite flotation runs 48–55% Zn (a clean Australian or Peruvian concentrate at 52–54%, a bulk or complex concentrate at 45–48%), and the smelter pays for 85% of the zinc, which is the payable rate that has stood in the market for decades because the roast-leach-electrowin process recovers roughly that much; the treatment charge is deducted per dry tonne, with an escalator that moves it up or down as the LME zinc price moves through an agreed basis. Iron (≤ 6–8%; every unit above ties up zinc in ferrite), silica (≤ 3–4%, a leach-residue cost), lead, copper, cadmium (≤ 0.3%), mercury (≤ 10–20 ppm), arsenic and antimony are the penalty elements, and silver above roughly 90 g/t is paid as a credit. Lead concentrate from galena runs 55–70% Pb and is worth more per tonne than zinc concentrate because the payable rate is 95% and the silver is high — 200–1,500 g/t in Peruvian and Mexican concentrates, paid at 95% above a 50 g/t deduction — so the silver credit is often larger than the lead. Zinc (≤ 4–6%, penalised in a lead concentrate as lead is in a zinc one), arsenic, antimony and bismuth are its penalties, and moisture for both sits at 8–10%, deducted before payment. On the trade, Peru is the largest seaborne exporter of both, but it has not reported 2025 under HS 2607 or 2608 to UN Comtrade at the time of writing, so no destination figure is quoted here; the buyer map is known from the smelter side — Chinese, Korean, Indian, Japanese and Gulf zinc smelters and Chinese, Korean and Indian lead smelters.

The buyer is a custom zinc or lead smelter, and the enquiry is a specification with a penalty schedule and a delivery port rather than a price per tonne. Indian and Gulf smelters take clean Peruvian, Australian and Mexican zinc concentrate in bulk; Chinese and Korean smelters take the complex and lower-grade parcels that need their blending capacity; Turkish and Bolivian lead concentrates move in containers to Chinese and Indian lead smelters on their silver. CBIL is a commodity brokerage company and brokers zinc and lead concentrate parcels from trader and mid-tier miner allocations in Peru, Mexico, Bolivia, Australia, Turkiye and Kazakhstan against SGS, Alfred H Knight or Bureau Veritas sampling and assay of Zn or Pb, Ag, Fe, SiO₂, Cd, Hg, As, Sb, Cu and moisture on a dry basis, with umpire assay and the payable and penalty schedule written into the contract before the parcel is fixed. Both concentrates are IMSBC Code Group A cargoes that can liquefy above their transportable moisture limit, so the shipper's TML and moisture certificate is a condition of loading; zinc concentrate moves in Handysize and Supramax lots on FOB and CIF terms out of Callao, Manzanillo and Port Pirie, and lead concentrate, in smaller lots, in 20-foot containers with liners, and because CBIL also runs a chartering desk (LaycanDesk), the freight leg on bulk parcels is quoted alongside the concentrate. Send your Zn or Pb range, iron and silica ceilings, the silver you expect and your discharge port, and we will work the parcel to it.

Need the ship as well? Our chartering desk prices concentrate freight, Group A cargoes on LaycanDesk.