The conference hosted by ITRI China in Kunming on 23-25 April attracted 260 delegates from 30 countries and benefited from the support of Yunnan Tin and sponsorship from all the other main Chinese producers. The meeting took place at a time when financial markets have been particularly unsettled and tin and other commodity prices have been falling. However in a keynote speech Gao Wenxiang, General Manager of Yunnan Tin Group, noted that while the industry had been buffeted by wind and rain “we will definitely see rainbows”.
The fundamental reason for confidence in the future of the industry in China was the prospect of continuing economic growth. Under the new government blueprint, per capita GDP is expected to double to US$12,000 in the current decade. Mr Gao noted that China’s refined tin production and consumption had doubled over the last decade, but there had been no growth in mine production and economic resources were limited, concluding that “it is absolutely obvious that the supply of tin mines in China is far behind its own market requirement”. The challenge of limited domestic tin resources was also referred to by Pan Wenju, Vice Chairman of the China Non-Ferrous Metals Association (CNIA), who called for international joint ventures to improve resource security, as well as increased tailings treatment and recycling of end of life products.
Speakers from the world’s other largest producing countries also discussed production challenges. Agung Nugroho, Corporate Secretary of PT Timah, said that lack of control of small-scale mining was a major issue – pointing out that while Timah controlled 90% of all mining leases in Indonesia, private smelters accounted for 71% of the country’s exports last year. However he forecast that the implementation of new mining and export regulations would improve the situation from this year. Rosa Elena Reategui of Minsur reviewed the prospects for South American production and reported that the depletion of reserves at the company’s San Rafael mine in Peru was likely to result in a sharp drop in production from 2017 while Bolivian expansion projects were well behind schedule. However Minsur was building up its production in Brazil (2013 forecast output – 5,200 tonnes of refined tin) and would start up a large tailings project, Bofedal II, in Peru in 2016.
The conference session on tin applications also included a mix of wind, rain and rainbows. The main negative feature, covered by several speakers, was the impact of miniaturisation and the trend away from wave soldering on electronics solder volumes. Valentijn Van Velthoven of Alpha Asia said that a forecast cyclical recovery in electronic equipment production could result in 6 – 7% industry growth rates in 2014-2015, but area growth in printed circuit board production (which the company had found correlated closely with solder sales) might only be 1% pa. Jasbir Bath of IPC also reviewed the impact of miniaturisation and changing assembly technologies, but pointed out the likely positive impact of increased use of lead-free alloys in telecoms, automotive and medical applications (which are collectively estimated to account for 34% of the market) in the coming years. There was also a prospect of a move from voluntary to mandatory restrictions on lead use in the China consumer products market from as early as July 2014.
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Other positive views on the outlook for tin usage in China came from Zhang Wencan of the China Metal Packaging Association and Guo Yinghui, Vice General Manager of YTC’s chemicals division. Mr Zhang said that although the Chinese tinplate industry suffered from over-capacity and quality problems, further investment in new larger plants would add another 3 million tonnes to annual capacity in the next five years – which might be bad for tinplate prices and profit margins but good for tin demand. Mr Guo forecast a strong growth in demand for inorganic tin chemicals, as a result of rapidly growing PVC production and a likely rise in the market share of tin stabilisers as they replaced lead, cadmium and metallic salts.
