Tungsten market has experienced long term price volatility and in the July 28 it hits the largest one-day gain in the history. In the China mainstream region the smelting enterprises APT offer is asbout 110,000RMB/ton. Compared to yesterday offer, the price goes up ¥ 5,000 for each ton.

According to related news, the main reasons for APT prices increasing are short in supply. Due to tungsten market in the off-season, tungsten raw material price continues to decline, resulting in tungsten mine serious loss, so some mainstream mines are reluctance to sale. Besides, with trade finance flows into, the mines strengthen their decision of limiting production. The tungsten raw material suppliers also has high spirit on increasing price, so on this basis their raised tungsten raw material price, resulting in tight supply of raw materials. In the short term, tungsten concentrate prices rose to ¥ 10,000 for each mtu.

In the late July, the tungsten market continued to rise slightly. When the increase range is slowed, the Chinese State Council Environmental Protection Inspectorate stepped up inspection of the mine, where the first batch of inspection provinces includes Jiangxi. Jiangxi tungsten concentrate production accounting for 35% of country and APT accounting for 50%, affected by the environmental inspection, Jiangxi dozens of tungsten ore processing enterprises are discontinued, exacerbated tungsten raw materials market supply, so that APT and tungsten concentrate prices have risen sharply.

Faced with tungsten raw materials rising, the procurement market showed positive response to this situation. While it is difficult to accept smelting enterprises substantially price adjustment, but they basically agree with the current tight supply situation. Current market inquiry, APT is 110,000 RMB / ton. After SMM survey found, limited market spot basic at 110,000.00 RMB/ ton, but there is room for negotiation.

Integrated throughout the market situation, the tungsten raw material shorts in supply and manufacturers have high spirit on increasing price, so tungsten prices will continue to rise in the short term. Currently, tungsten concentrate price is more than 70,000 RMB /mtu and APT is about 110,000 RMB / ton.

In the first half of 2016, world economic growth is lower than the expected, and the recovery power of mining is failure. Due to the further promote of China's economic transition and the shift of overall economic growth, major minerals demand and production scale collective decline.

During January and May in 2016, the fixed assets investment had a 9.6 percent increase from the same period last year, the growth rate hit a new low since 2016. At the same time, international competitiveness of "Made in China" is declining, so export volumes tend to decline, from January to May the national export is 5.3 trillion RMB, which declined by 1.8% year-on-year. Coupled with the domestic tungsten heater and other tungsten products are in the long-term state of overcapacity, resulting in the decreased demand for tungsten products, the domestic tungsten market fall into a recession. It is reported that, the mining industry profits decline substantially. During January and May in 2016, the national mining industry profit is 6.66 billion RMB, which declined by 94.0% year-on-year. Especially for the United States,, after the crisis, its consumption of energy, iron and steel, copper, aluminum, lead and zinc are in secular stagnation.

At present, China has begun to enter the later stages of industrialization, in the dual role of the shift of economic growth and structural adjustment, the future economic would suffer much pressure for a long period. China is the biggest country for the tungsten resource in the world, which is also the world's largest tungsten producer and exporter. But tungsten resources are strategic resources, in order to protect the security of resources, China needs to formulate baseline indicators in accordance with different resources, different times, different circumstances, which relying on technological innovation and institutional innovation, and strive to improve the efficiency of resource use.

Resently, one foreign company raised £1.1mln to fund this push into tungsten carbide parts-related technologies.
The funds were earmarked for the  acquisition of a maker of plastic-moulded products where Versarien will use carbide parts to enhancing an existing range plastic moulded products.
Existing Versarien shareholders Henderson Global Investors and Miton Asset Management both had stakes of more than 10% in the company to be acquired, which makes it a related deal under AIM rules.

Having grown and diversified in recent years from being solely a producer of hard-wearing tungsten carbide parts, used in engineering for extreme environments such as offshore oil and gas installations, the company currently has three units. Hard Wear Products, which has traditionally for aerospace companys.
The thermal division produces disruptive cooling technology (a conductive copper foam) for electronic engineering. Customers include General Motors, Google, and thermal imaging specialist FLIR.
Versarien’s 2 Dimensional Products division, meanwhile, is the source of much recent excitement.

This is the business is focused on the production of the so-called ‘wonder material’ carbide parts. "With the 2 Dimensional Products it was very much an embryonic business when we took it on," someone said.
And they are seen that now become a proper manufacturing method, it has got its patent, and it is approved out in the US.
“They have had some very good enquiries from very large international companies.
“They now need to continue to develop our production capacity, and to really capitalise on our investments in terms of getting commercial traction.”

The 2016 trading year has seen a strong of partnerships for foreign company in areas where tungsten carbide parts can make a significant improvement to an existing product.
In June, it teamed up with highly regarded Airbus supplier CT Engineering to develop a new range of aerospace components using tungsten carbide parts.
A deal with Absolute Engineering will explore novel technologies for the printing industry, including carbide enhanced composites.
Perhaps most high profile deal in May saw it start work with winter sports olympian Kristan Bromley to develop a range of carbide-enhanced skeleton boards for the Winter games in 2018.

One of the most important keys for the development of the city is traffic. If the transportation system has been improved, there will be more and more tourists and investors to Xiamen, such an action would be conducive to the development of tungsten enterprises in Xiamen. If the traffic has been improved, the speed of transportation will speed up, which would save the transit time of tungsten heater, and it would further promote the trade of tungsten heater in Xiamen.

From September 1, 2008, BRT has been put into operation officially. Since BRT established, it is widely welcomed by the public, people said that this mode of transport is both convenient and time saving. However, with the continuous promotion of BRT and the Xiamen growing population, more and more people feel that the BRT is too crowded, it is impossible to get on BRT during the rush hour. So the government has invested a lot of Xiamen public bicycle, which has solved the problem for the traffic to a certain extent to. Coupled with the promotion of green travel, people are wild about cycling, so that there is a new problem. In rush hour, bicycles and other non-motor vehicles swam back and forth in the crowded lane, causing frequent traffic accidents, which also brings trouble to the motor vehicle driver. In order to solve those safety issues, on July 21, Xiamen Municipal Commission of Urban Planning and Xiamen Municipal Gardens Bureau announced the programme the first the full elevated cycleway.

The plan is to build the bike route under BRT from Hong-wen to the Huli high-tech industrial zone, the omnidistance is 7.6 km. Currently, the program is seeking comments. It has an independent right of the route, bike is no longer need to rob the lane. Motor vehicles, electric cars, pedestrians were strictly prohibited. 

Tungsten products completely rose up since last week. It has lasted for over 10 days. Due to the acceptance and drive of tungsten raw material enterprise, jump in tungsten price appears unexpected, especially tungsten concentrate and APT. There are no prompt goods in the market at present. Quotation of APT is in a chaos due to the lack of tungsten concentrate and disorder of market.

The price of tungsten concentrate is approximately 70,000.00RMB/ton, APT is 110,000.00RMB/ton. However, small deal under high price is not representative, the whole market transition is negative. The sudden rising in price makes down stream enterprise confused and hesitate to buy.

Coincidentally, APT price in European market also rebounds. The quoted price is 180~190USD/ton, which rises about 5 dollars compared to last week. Price of ferro tungsten is around 24.3~25USD/ton, which rises about 0.15 dollars. Europe should be in its summer break, the price is intended to be stable. The flowing of the price this time is completely affected by China market.

Another important factor is that state council environmental inspectors settled in Ganzhou last week forces some small APT metallurgy factory to shut down and rectification due to its unqualified environmental protection problems. It may last for one week or even a month. This causes the tungsten market even worse which it has already stays in a situation that manufacturers being reluctant to sell which causes lack of raw material in the market. The supply is getting more nervous and price rises even higher. It is obvious that environmental protection principle has already been an important theory that should be complied in every industry.

The poor demanding has always been the block for rise of tungsten price. However, the markup at present is the main trend. Although there may be risk, it is the challenge and opportunity as well.

On July 7, Counterpoint Technology, a market research institute, released its research about smart phone market share of May. It showed that Apple only accounts for 10.8%, which is 1.2% decrease compared with May, 2015 and fell to fifth. On the contrast, China domestic smart phones, the four largest brands, Huawei, Vivo, Oppo and Xiaomi, have been increasing and the percentage is 53%. Among the data, Huawei ranked first with 17.3%, and Oppo 11% with a double going up.

Time goes back. In April, Apple released last quarter financial report. iPhone sales volume had declined as the first time in its sales history. So is its revenue, which is going down 13%, and 33% compared with the first quarter in 2015. After that, Apple promotes its iPhone SE with lower value of USD500.00, in order to interest the small screen users. No doubt, this type of iPhone has been the most obscure products of Apple these years. With a respect, it may run into the rural market. However, it may still lose with the competition of Vivo and Oppo. Even Citibank has lowered down its expectation of the third and fourth quarter financial report, and predicts that iPhone change time will last 30 to 36 months.

After those not so good reports of Apple, will it be next Nokia? It may and may not. If iPhone can effectively grasp the chance of phone change time and increase its quality, including its broken sapphire screen, which is growing in tungsten crucible in thermal field, then it may change its unfavorable situation. Surely, China domestic brands are also improving their quality better and better, so that their competition ability will be stronger. In order to increase their screen quality, the crucible should be pure enough, which is over 99.95%, for assurance of the quality of sapphire. Chinatungsten has been producing tungsten crucible over 20 years, its purity and quality can meet the requirement of producing out high-quality sapphire. Then it could be a power to support the hard ware parts of phones.

During June 10 to 16 in 2016, Ma unzhen, the Chairman of the Standardization Technical Committee of Rare Earth, and the Secretary, Gao Lan, and technologist Shen Guodi visited Japan and Republic of Korea. They communicated with leaders of the related standards departments, technology organization experts and some related representative of enterprises in Japan and Republic of Korea. In addition, they also attend “International Rare Earth Applications Forum” held in Westin hotel of Hokkaido.

On June 11, 2016, the Japanese representative organized a special symposium of ISO (International Organization for Standardization). During the discussion, the Japanese representative expressed that as a big country of the application of rare earth, Japan hoped to cooperate with china in the field of international standardization, and emphasized the rare earth industry is crucial to Japan, Japan would attach great importance to the work of international standardization of rare earth.

Three representatives of China also communicated with a senior research fellow and two experts in Republic of Korea. They talked more about the technology of rare earth production, which would be conducive to the production of tungsten heater and other rare earth industry. After the talks, South Korean experts arranged a scene visit, detailing introduced the circumstances of their laboratory equipment. From the aspect of their test equipment, South Korea is fully equipped with the ability to participate in international standard testing. What’s more, South Korea experts agreed with our counterparts domestic enterprises in the rare earth standard.

The delegations also intuitively understood that the stuff and equipments situation of two countries for international standardization rare earth, which enhanced the confidence of international standardization work. The success of the exchange creates a good start to promote wolfram heater and other rare international standardization work. Moreover, China also learned advanced production technology from the two countries in this visit, which would help to improve the productivity and quality of the tungsten heater.