What will the year 2016 have in store for the world indium, germanium and gallium industries? Will Opportunities arise or do we face even gloomier prospects?
Similar to the condition of the overall Chinese non-ferrous metals industry, China’s indium, germanium and gallium industries all witnessed a depressed atmosphere caused by a slow economy, weaker prices and sluggish demand. Is there any hope for these industries to break through the trough and embrace a recovery of both prices and demand and move onto an upward track?
Looking back at 2015, the Chinese indium market has experienced the most miserable year in nearly 10 years. Poor demand from downstream industries and soft commercial investment has pressed down the prices for indium ingot to a historical low, with expectations of this to continue its downward slide into next year. State-owned indium ingot producers were generally reluctant to make sales and private producers reduced output or halted production altogether one after another as they sought to mitigate any risks of a further drop in price. In the export market, ever since China lifted the 2 percent export tax in May 2015, there were indeed some more activity, but the prices stumbled frequently and continuously. What’s more, the export quota could still find its existence in the market and continued to impose limits on free trading. Is there any hope for indium prices to rise in 2016? How will the Fanya Metal Exchange deal with its 3,000t indium metal stocks? How will the Sino-South Korea free trade agreement affect the ITO target scrap market? Could the growth of ITO target output really pull up the indium prices as expected?
In 2015, Chinese germanium metal market put great efforts to the development of downstream demand. Consumption from optical fiber industry was highlighted while the demand from FTIR and military industries was relatively weak. In spite of the generally inactive market and contracted output in 2015, the prices for germanium metal were still firmer than those of other minor metals. Besides, China’s national reservation policy has strengthened confidence of the market participants. In face of the increasing demand of the global market and China’s protection policy on the strategic metal, how will the germanium metal market look like in 2016?
In the year of 2015, the Chinese gallium metal industry has been haunted by overcapacity and the prices have declined constantly without any signs of bouncing back. Under such circumstances, how should China integrate its domestic resources? Will the gallium metal industry sees new demand of any kind?
In May 2016, Asian Metal will hold the 9th World Indium & Germanium & Gallium Forum in the scenic Sanya island of Hainan province. We invite all the friends in the global indium, germanium and gallium industries to come to the meeting, to discuss and share ideas and opinions on how we could get out of the severe market situation with joint hands.
