Tungsten Industry Pays Attention To High-temperature Alloy And Consumer Electronics

According to the latest report of Roskill, a British consultancy, electric vehicles may replace diesel locomotives, which means that the price of tungsten and tungsten used for automobiles can no longer recover to the level of 2017. Tungsten industry should open up new markets, such as high-temperature alloy, semiconductor, consumer electronics, etc.

The report mentioned that China's environmental reform plan four years ago interrupted the supply of upstream tungsten raw materials and refined tungsten, pushing the price of ammonium paratungstate (APT) to a multi-year high. In June 2018, the European APT price reached a peak of $350/mtu. However, analysts believe that against the background of the COVID-19-19 pandemic and Sino US trade disputes, this performance is unlikely to repeat.

Weakening international logistics transport capacity, decreasing downstream terminal consumption and increasing US commodity taxes on China have led to a fall in tungsten prices, especially in the automotive and aerospace sectors, where consumption has been most affected by the epidemic. It is reported that tungsten used in the automobile industry accounts for 30% of its total consumption, while the global automobile output is expected to decline by 9% from 2019 to 2020, and the output of the aerospace industry is expected to decline by 40% in the same period, which has caused a certain impact on tungsten consumption.

In February 2020, the European APT price was 243 dollars/mtu, and in July, it hit the bottom of 208 dollars/mtu. After the second quarter of 2020, with the R & D of COVID-19-19 vaccine and the stable recovery of the manufacturing level, the tungsten market demand has recovered to a certain extent, and the price has also begun to rebound. However, uncertainty still exists in the tungsten industry as a whole.

The research institute believes that, in order to enable the tungsten industry to develop for a long time, it should focus on its primary application fields, including the consumption of tungsten compounds in the field of steel and alloy in the field of superalloys, as well as in the field of semiconductors and consumer electronics.

In addition, the report also pointed out that due to the service life limitation of several large tungsten mines in China and Russia, new tungsten mine projects should also be concerned to ensure adequate market supply.