The current domestic production capacity of potash and oxides is far greater than the market demand, and the production capacity of back-end high value-added products is also very considerable, but the output of ore is very small, and the technical capabilities of high value-added products are comparable to those of foreign countries. This means that many production and processing enterprises in China's tantalum and niobium industry can only digest the excess production capacity by importing ores and exporting intermediate processing products, resulting in low profits and high risks.
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Before the end of 2011, the tantalum and niobium industry was operating normally in a benign environment. There was a lot of room for the production of tantalum and niobium at the front end. The intermediate hydrometallurgy and pyrometallurgy also had certain profits, and the back end had a high specific volume of tantalum powder. , Tantalum wire production and sales market also have a lot of room for operation, but since the second half of 2012, with the emergence of the global financial crisis, the application of tantalum and niobium is relatively narrow, and the consumption field is mostly high-end electronic products. The industry has been greatly impacted, and the special two-end nature of China's tantalum and niobium industry (raw materials outside, market outside) is under greater market pressure.
Since October 2012, the price of tantalum ore in the Chinese market has been declining all the way. The current selling price has far exceeded the production cost of domestic mines. Even African tantalum ore, which has been mainly sold at low prices, has also felt the market. Under the pressure of the downturn, shipments decreased significantly. At the same time, due to the weak support of the terminal market for tantalum ore consumption, the finished product sales market of the tantalum and niobium production chain is sluggish, causing foreign users to use two locks (locking the sales price and locking the price of raw materials) to organize the supply of goods for production and to fully compress the raw materials. , On the basis of profit margins in mid-end processing links, the normal operation of the industrial chain is maintained. In mainland China, in order to digest the high-priced ores signed and purchased before 2012, Ningxia Dongfang Tantalum Industry, a listed company, has been purchasing raw materials and reducing procurement costs by directly transacting with African tantalum ore suppliers for the past three years. , the procurement of domestic tantalum ore, oxides, and potash has basically stopped, and the rest of the domestic tantalum and niobium processing enterprises mostly use foreign imports, domestic assistance, and two locks to purchase ores, and arrange production after receiving orders. Inventory, resulting in the current low sales unit price of tantalum and niobium concentrate, sales volume is not large. On the whole, the current supply and demand in the tantalum and niobium market are sluggish, the cost is high, the selling price is low, and the operation is not smooth. According to the statistics of the Tantalum and Niobium Branch of China Nonferrous Metals Association at the end of 2014, it can be seen that although my country has sufficient processing capacity, due to the lack of self-produced ores and the insufficient processing capacity of the terminal, many tantalum and niobium processing enterprises were unable to process in 2014. Full production. In 2014, Chinese tantalum and niobium enterprises produced a total of 112 tons of tantalum ore (Ta 2 O 5 ), 458 tons of potassium salt, 262 tons of high-purity tantalum oxide, tantalum metal (tantalum bars, tantalum products, capacitor tantalum powder, metallurgical grade Tantalum powder, tantalum wire) 575 tons, tantalum carbide 55 tons. The difference between the production capacity and the actual output is too great, but with such output, each processing factory still has a certain amount of inventory, and there is obviously a situation of oversupply.
