8th International Rare Earth Summit--Asian Metal

End of Summit

Sponsored by Changzhou Geoquin Nano New Materials Co., Ltd. and Jiangsu Province Rare Earth Industry Association, Asian Metal's 8th International Rare Earth Summit took place successfully on 29-31 March, in Nanjing, China, with around 110 participants from the rare earth industry chain, in both overseas and domestic markets, participating.
The summit officially opened at 9:00 am on 30 March. Friday Gao, GM of the Base Metals Department at Asian Metal, made the opening speech. As the organizer, Friday briefly summarized the achievements of Asian Metal in recent years and the main content of the summit. Then, Gerry He, Sales Director of Fujian Changting Golden Dragon Rare-Earth Co., Ltd., delivered a report on the subject of “The status &future prospects of the Fujian Rare Earth Industry”. The company is one of China’s six rare earth groups and also a subsidiary company of Xiamen Tungsten Group. He introduced their “Fujian model” that develops the rare earth industry into a production chain and draws on a combination of production and research work. Afterwards, Hongjiang Wang, Deputy GM of Baotou Santoku Battery Materials Co., Ltd. sketched an outline of the Ni-MH battery market situation in HEV. Wang gave a thorough profile of the prospects for rare earth based hydrogen storage batteries focusing on three aspects, namely: the new energy vehicles market; the potential safety hazards of lithium batteries; and China’s supportive resource policy on new energy vehicles.
After a coffee break, Yi Dong, Chief Engineer of Tianhe Advanced Tech Magnet Co., Ltd. gave a report entitled “An Overview of the Applications for Rare Earth Permanent Magnets”. He analysed developments in the consumption of NdFeB magnets and their application in various areas. He put forward the opportunities and challenges that NdFeB magnet producers faced, sharing the key points they were focusing on and the direction in which technical developments were headed. Thereafter, Shemin Zhu, Professor at the State Key Laboratory of Material Chemistry, Nanjing Tech University, introduced her team’s work on rare earth-based de-NOX catalyst technology. The denitration catalyst based on cerium oxide is a new material which offers greater environmental protection and higher efficiency than traditional vanadium titanium catalysts. Zhu’s research work has been successfully industrialized, carving out a new downstream market for a raft of lanthanum and cerium products.
During the afternoon, Lili Zhao, Deputy GM of China Metallurgy Import & Export Jiangsu Company, summarized the factors affecting market prices, drawing on her rich experience in rare earth trading. She delivered her predictions for the export market in 2016 in terms of price, supply, demand and other aspects. Soon afterwards, Niels Hachmann, Manager of the Metallurgy Department at Thyssenkrupp Metallurgical Products GmbH, introduced the changes that have taken place in Germany’s rare earth market, including their new rare earth ore project. The next speaker was Bin Zhou, Deputy GM of Changzhou Geoquin Nano New Materials Co., Ltd. He dissected the rare earth applications of nano materials and other high-tech areas. Within his report, Zhou called on Chinese rare earth enterprises to take consumers’ technical requirements as the entry point in order to break through the current difficulties in rare earth development.
After the discussion during the coffee break, Binghui Chen, Vice President of China Securities Research Institute delivered a report on “Rare Earth, a rare opportunity in Capital Markets,” from the fresh perspective of the capital researcher. He pointed out that the rare market mainly depends on the supportive policies of government, given the conditions of sluggish demand, low price and dwindling profits, so market researchers mainly concentrate on new government policies. In other words, “The rare earth capital market depends on national storage in the short-term and the strike on private ore in the long run”. Finally, Yanping Yang, Sales Director at Hunan Nonferrous Fluorides Chemical Co., Ltd., detailed the technical developments in the area of rare earth fluorides and their newly-developed technique. The company offers high-quality rare earth fluorides for rare earth metal production.
Organized by Asian Metal, the 8th International Rare Earth Summit drew to a successful conclusion at 5:30 pm on 30 March, thanks to the strong support of Changzhou Geoquin Nano New Materials Co., Ltd. and Jiangsu Province Rare Earth Industry Association, as well as all of the representatives.
Asian Metal has successfully hosted all kinds of minor metal forums and summits on a number of occasions, always receiving enthusiastic support and cooperation from companies in the industry. Asian Metal sincerely thanks participants for their support and co-operation and will persist in its efforts to continue this enthusiasm and spirit of professionalism. We look forward to the next summit!