Noranda Income Fund Unit T.NIF.UN

RE:carbon tax

[galvanized]

EU carbon taxes (and also on top a carbon emmissions trading system) are part of the problem but that is not the main story...IMHO.

As I understand it, one of the Nyrstar plants is in the netherlands, and the other two, I seem to remember are in France.

In the Netherlands, they have very recently decided to close down their largest natural gas field, because there is some concern that production from the field is causing land to sink, and, well, when most of your country is below sea level to start with, that is a big problem. The result is a huge and permanent spike in energy costs in the Netherlands. So the Nyrstar operation is responsible for about 1% of all electricity use in that country.  i doubt that all of the appartment dwellers are going to want to be forced to turn down their thermostats just so nyrstar can make zinc.  so to my zinc encrusted mind, the Netherlands Nyrstar operation needs to be written down to zero.

And then as far as the operations in France go, In the past they have enjoyed cheap electrity from nuclear power, but the troubles now is that a lot of those nuke plants are near the end of their life, and face huge decommissioning costs., so the cheap nuke power is rapidly turning into very very expensive nuke power.  And then of course, in the case of France, it is just more profitable to sell power to your power hungery neighbors than waste it by making zinc at home.  So good luck to Nyrstar about their France based operations as well.