BEIJING (Asian Metal) 29 Mar 21 - Hunan Zhirong Antimony Industry Group Co., Ltd., one of antimony ingot 99.85%min producers in China, restarted its blast furnace in mid-March to produce antimony ingot 99.85%min and operates three reverberatory furnaces now with the output throughout March 2021 expected to be around 300t, a source from the company revealed to Asian Metal.

The source said, "We finished equipment maintenance in mid-March, when we formally ignited our blast furnace. We operate three reverberatory furnaces at the moment and expect that the antimony ingot 99.85%min output would be about 300t in March 2021." The company already arranged production for orders it signed to early June. In addition, it sold 60t of the material at RMB70,500/t (USD10,778/t) EXW D/P two weeks ago, but stops quoting now with no stocks in hand.

With an annual production capacity of 5,000t of antimony ingot, the company produced about 3,000t of the material in 2020 and expects that the output in 2021, March 2021 and April 2021 would be around 3,000t, 300t and 400t respectively. It holds no spot stocks for the time being, unchanged from the same period of last month.

Mainstream prices of Chinese antimony ingot 99.85%min stand at RMB69,000-70,000/t (USD10,549-10,701/t) EXW D/P currently, down by RMB1,000/t (USD153/t) from early last week. Insiders predict that Chinese antimony ingot 99.85%min prices would generally keep firm in the coming week as suppliers hold back from selling at present against the backdrop that the supply shortage of raw material is still not eased obviously.