Opportunities coexist with challenges in Chinese rhenium market in 2020
----Interview with Wang Fusheng
General Manager
Shanghai Rhenium Material Co., Ltd
- Shanghai Rhenium Material Co., Ltd. is a high-tech enterprise headquartered in Shanghai. Since 2010, the company focuses on providing high purity ammonium rhenate and rhenium metal for aerospace and petrochemical industry chain. They have owned two ammonium rhenate plants and a rhenium metal joint production base.
- Asian Metal: Mr. Wang, thank you for taking the interview by Asian Metal. Could you please introduce your company in brief?
- Wang: Thanks to Asia Metal, the production and operation of the company have all recovered to normal situation now. The company focuses on providing customers with high-quality rhenium products, and our third ammonium rhenate plant is also under construction and is expected to go into production this year.
- Asian Metal: What are the main products of your company? What is the future of downstream applications?
- Wang: Our main products include high purity ammonium rhenate, rhenium powder and rhenium particles.
- About 70% of global rhenium production is used to make superalloy parts for aerospace engines. Another major application is platinum-rhenium catalyst in petrochemical industry. There are also a few applications in the biomedical industry.
- With the vigorous development of domestic aerospace industry in recent years, rhenium has a broad application prospect.
- Asian Metal: What are your advantages and disadvantages compared with other smelters in China?
- Wang: Rhenium is a rare strategic metal, and most of it exists in ore such as molybdenum and copper in associated form. Shanghai rhenhan unique waste acid rhenium extraction technology in one step to produce high purity ammonium rhenate and can be processed into high metal rhenium according to end users' demand.
- The main content of all ammonium rhenate produced by the company can reach 4N, and the impurity content meets YS/T 894-2013.The main content of rhenium was 4N, and the impurity content was YS/T 1018-2015.That is to say, all our products can reach the aviation grade.
- At the same time, due to our unique waste acid rhenium extraction technology has a very high extraction rate, so our current production capacity has reached 10 tons of ammonium rhenate per year, planning production capacity of 50 tons per year. Therefore, the biggest advantage of our company is to supply large and high-quality rhenium products for users in a long-term and stable way to ensure the strategic security of the supply chain.
- Asian Metal: Is rhenium recovery from waste acid a new recovery technology? Compared with the traditional rhenium metal production technology, does it have any advantages?
- Wang: Shanghai Rhenium can adsorb rhenium directly from waste acid by a new resin adsorption method. Compared with the traditional process, the operation is simple, pollution-free, efficient and the resin is renewable. Ammonium rhenate can be produced from waste acid in one step. The land use and investment are also greatly reduced compared with traditional crafts.
- Asian Metal: Are there significant advantages or disadvantages in the production technology, production cost and product quality of rhenium products in China compared with other plants out of China?
- Wang: Because the present domestic rhenium products is still at the early stage, the user group is small, so domestic production enterprises with independent technology and less technical level is uneven, most of the enterprise product quality with the rest of the world have a certain gap, especially the aerospace enterprises, we have learned, rely mainly on imports. In view of this, our company continuously increases the research and development investment, at present our production technology and product quality have reached or partially exceeded the rest of the world's products.
- Asian Metal: Due to the COVID-19 outbreak spreading around the world this year, the economic development of many countries has been hit hard. Is the market of rhenium downstream affected?
- Wang: Yes, COVID-19 has had a significant impact on the market for the use of the rhenium metal. On the one hand, due to the control of the epidemic, many downstream enterprises shut down production, reducing the demand for rhenium; on the other hand, the shutdown of the aviation industry reduces the demand for aircraft, so overall, the market impact is huge.
- Asian Metal: As current prices for rhenium metal are in a chaos, how do you plan to deal with this situation?
- Wang: Discouraged by COVID-19, the demand from downstream industry especially from aerospace industry remains weak with rare new orders. Some traders continue to lower their prices to promote sales and keep cash flow. However, most plants refuse to accept lower prices due to the firm production cost. As a result, the domestic market price of rhenium is indeed quite chaotic and product quality is uneven. We will continue to practice good internal skills, sincere to our users to provide the best quality of ammonium rhenate and rhenium metal products.
- Asian Metal: With the development of China's downstream high-precision end industry, will the domestic market's demand for rhenium products increase?
- Wang: Yes, with the development of the downstream high-precision end industry, the domestic market's demand for rhenium products is bound to usher in greater growth. On the one hand, the domestic epidemic tends to improve, and the fixed rigid demand for enterprises to gradually resume work and production will recover. On the other hand, the accelerated development of domestic aerospace industry will certainly increase the demand for rhenium, we firmly believe.
- Asian metal: Thank you again for accepting the interview of Asian metal. Wish the company a thriving business!
