International Conferences in Southern and Central China (69)
Dear Readers,
November meant traveling for our resources experts Thomas Grob and Matthias Rüth. Our last newsletter for 2018 contains information regarding the most relevant trends central to international conferences in South and Central China. Starting in spring 2019 we are proud to offer you a new service, TRADIUM INVEST, a website focused on your interests as investors.
Happy festive season wishes,
Your TRADIUM Team
Rare Earths Conference Hong Kong
The 15th International Rare Earths Conference was held in Hong Kong in November. The most important topic was magnets and, as a consequence thereof, questions regarding the criticality of neodymium, praseodymium, dysprosium and terbium. Will available resources be enough to sustain the projected annual growth of 5%? Relevant Development: After the resource was reserved for the bulb industry, because of its positive rate development, Terbium will probably get increasingly used in the magnet production, leading to higher rates.
GLOBAL MINOR METALS FORUM
From the 27. 27th to the 28th November the Global Minor Metals Forum met in Kunming in Central China. Presentations created a joined tendentially positive outlook for investors. Due to surplus production the price level of for example gallium was rather low in the past years. This will probably change. The worldwide production capacity for gallium, which is at 720 t/year, has been reached, demand is continuously rising, however. Supply and demand are in balance again, causing rates to stabilize and presumably rise.
Similar claims can be made for indium. Here the production capacity is stable at around 1000 t/year, while the demand is rising (the TU Bergakademie Freiberg estimates 1900 t/year until 2030). This trend gets driven by, for example, growing screen sizes (the purchasing of 75“ flat screen TVs might rise up to 240 % until 2030), the global expansion of 5G cellular networks and the deployment of quantum dots for the color quality of screens.