Executives and Chinese solder companies interviewed by Reuters expect increases in tin demand and prices in the final quarter, although China’s tin use in 2012 will still be lower than last year.
“If demand rises as expected, all of us will rush to buy,” said a top executive at Haifeng Metal Products, which produces solder in Hebei, central China. “Prices in China could rise strongly,” added the executive. He said his firm planned to stock up on refined tin between November and January 2013 on expectations that China’s new government, which will be chosen in October, will launch a series of measures to boost an economy that is growing at its slowest pace in three years.
A spokesman for a second company had a similar view. “Demand is bottoming now. It should improve in the fourth quarter because that was the peak consuming season in previous years and this year would be the same,” said a senior executive at a solder manufacturing plant in the southern region of Guangxi.
ITRI expects that tin use in China will fall by 3.8% year-on-year to 147,900 tonnes and calculates that high imports in the first half of the year resulted in a build-up of some 9,000 tonnes in unreported stocks. “To say that China’s tin consumption will be higher than last year or 2010 is wrong,” Su Weijiang, head of the sales unit of Yunnan Tin Company told Bloomberg in an interview. “Consumption will certainly be lower as the global economy is cooling.” He noted that weak demand from major economies elsewhere continued to be a problem. “When we say ‘China’s demand,’ it’s actually referring to manufacturing demand,” Su said. “China appears to be the largest user of tin, but the actual consumption is largely in the US and European markets. When these markets shrink, as falling Chinese exports show, it brings down manufacturing demand in China.”
