A perfect storm for zinc

From this copy of a Bloomberg piece:

China's Zhuzhou Smelter will reopen its ... lead plant in two days after annual maintenance, despite a government order to stop production on pollution concerns, company officials said on Thursday...
Zhuzhou Smelter's zinc plant, which is China's largest by output, produced more than 320,000 tonnes of refined zinc and zinc products in 2005, according to company officials.
Cadmium pollution in a river in southern China's Guangdong province had forced Shenzhen Zhongjin Lingnan Non-ferrous Metal Co. Ltd's Shaoguan smelter to completely stop production from Dec. 21.
The Shaoguan smelter usually produces about 170,000 tonnes of zinc ... a year.

Why is zinc important? Take a look at this Reuters piece:

Prices for zinc, used to galvanize steel to prevent corrosion, may average 41 percent higher this year because of shrinking stockpiles and rising demand in China for autos and buildings, Daiwa Securities SMBC said...
Zinc's shortfall in production in 2006 will widen to 399,000 metric tons from 310,000 in 2005, Morgan Stanley said Dec. 15. Zinifex, the world's second largest zinc producer, said in November it expects a larger deficit in 2006 for the metal, compared with 2005.
"China's zinc metal exports have dried up almost to nothing in the last few months, while imports have rocketed," UBS AG analysts Matt Fernley and Peter Hickson said in a Jan. 4 report. "We see the major drivers for this as the recovery of the Chinese construction sector, where galvanized steel is a major building material."

To make matters worse:

Zinc prices rose to a record in London on Wednesday, topping $2,000 a metric ton, after Grupo México suspended production at a refinery in Mexico, reducing supplies as global stockpiles shrink.
The refinery was shut down by a power failure that caused "material damage," Grupo México said. It produced more than 100,000 metric tons of zinc in 2005, equal to about 1 percent of global demand. Zinc stockpiles have plunged 39 percent in a year.

Given the nature of fourth-generation warfare, what's to keep an aggressive hedge fund from hiring a few people to ensure some of their bets pan out?