The pending price rises for tungsten products

       Recently, according to news reports interface: icbc international raw materials, according to industry analysts Zhao Dongchen always analysis on Russian aluminum trump tariffs and trade sanctions, after the London metal exchange aluminum futures prices rose to a high nearly seven years. "In addition to aluminum, the next metal that is likely to rise is tungsten," he said.

At present, the U.S. military industry, automobile industry, aerospace and semiconductor industry and other manufacturing industries need to consume a large amount of tungsten. China has almost supplied most of the tungsten demand in the us industry, excluding parts of the waste tungsten recovery (30 per cent). It can also be said that, like rare earths, the United States relies on China's tungsten, even though some of its tungsten products originate from third countries, but the original origin is still China.



The application of tungsten in the United States mainly lies in the deep processing of tungsten processing industry chain, such as high-end hard alloy cutter, missile, aircraft, new energy industry, semiconductor industry, etc. Its main tungsten raw materials are from China's primary tungsten intermediate products. The end of last century, China has been basically no longer exported tungsten concentration, and mainly exported tungsten intermediate products, for example, partial ammonium tungstate of para-ammonium tungstate, sodium tungstate and tungsten powder, tungsten iron and carbide primary blank, etc. Of course, this is hardly a boast of progress, after all, the tungsten smelting phase of these products is the most polluted stage in the manufacture of tungsten products.



Beginning in July 2016, tungsten concentrate and APT smooth prices began to rebound, and in September 2017, tungsten prices surged fifty percent over the previous year, 65% of black tungsten concentrate was up to 120000 yuan/ton, then back slightly, now stable at 110000 / tons of interval. Most foreign media believe that the price of tungsten ore comes from China's increasingly strict environmental policy. But the author believes that environmental inspectors are only a trigger for higher prices, and the deeper reason is the increasing scarcity and cost of China's strategic minerals.



Before 2017, the price of tungsten concentrate will run below 70,000 yuan for a long period of time. Most of the mines are in serious loss, the mining equipment technology is backward, the resources are wasted, and the treatment of mine workers is relatively low. And, after the founding of new China, after nearly 70 years of mining industrial scale, high grade and recovery of wolframite mine is nearing an end, China resources advantage, to the current mining low grade, and ore dressing procedure complex white tungsten concentrate, mining costs have so far. Again along with the development of Chinese economy, labor conditions, logistics, environmental and ecological protection sustainable construction work will be more standardized, the costs of rigid rise is also contributing to the rise in price of tungsten. According to the author's calculation, the price of 110,000 / ton of tungsten concentrate is only close to the cost of tungsten mining. In the long run, the further increase of tungsten price is a big probability event.



It is understood that after the rise of tungsten ore, the international most nervous is Britain and the United States. In Britain last year will be listed as key metal, tungsten and tungsten trump in March of this year will also be listed as one of the 35 species of key minerals must be self-sufficient, more americans fear is, the main mining tungsten what they think they are the biggest competitors, China and Russia. It can be said that the strategic importance of tungsten is no less than rare earth. The United States is in addition to outside China, the world's largest tungsten resource consumption country, the backbone cars and arms cannot leave the tungsten, even in North America has 14% of the world's tungsten reserves (5% 5% in the United States, Canada), also has a mine is about to run, but for now, all is a drop in the ocean. So, the americans were cut off zte chip supply at the same time, is also the worry about yourself will be "China", no raw materials, please use trump's mouth and air to achieve made in America.