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.

As the first decade guideline of "three-step" strategy for construction of manufacturing power of China, "Made In China 2025" depicts a path for Chinese manufacturing from large to strong, which has been gained high-level attention by Communist Party of China (CPC). In early July 2015, the State Council set up national manufacturing power construction leading group, and the vice-premier Ma Kai is the group leader, and there are more than 20 government departments involved in this group. This group has held the third meeting and established a consultative committee for construction strategy of national manufacturing power, and builds up intersectoral links joint-action mechanism and actively mobilizes multi-power and enthusiasm.

Over the past year, for the implementation of the "Made in China 2025", the government mainly carried out three aspects. Firstly, the government prepared and issued the "1 + X" plan. Secondly, the government formulated a number of supporting policies. CBRC revised the "Commercial Bank M & A Loan Risk Management Guidelines" to encourage the support of commercial banks to manufacturing concern. It would work with the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology of the People’s Republic of China to further improve the financing guarantee system. The introduction of these supporting policies, mainly in order to provide the reasonable support for necessary innovation and development for manufacturing.

The third is to strengthen the guidance of local, promote development of regional differences. Some effects and implementation of policies and the major projects has been initially apparent. For example, “Enterprise R & D Expenses Plus Deduction Policy” further stimulates industrial enterprises, especially SMEs (Small and Medium Enterprises) innovation and dynamic development. Future development of "Made in China 2025" will be more perfect, be more conducive to long-term development of business volume, so that it will greatly facilitate the tungsten heater and other tungsten enterprises development.

Since the price of tungsten concentrate and ammonium paratungstate hit the bottom of 60,000RMB/ton, it stoped falling and went up slightly last week. The change in market is faster than expected, for most enterprises thought the market will turn better at the end of August.

The full-year profits took a hit from the on-going malaise in the Oil&Gas sector, although management sounded an optimistic note on the potential of its products, including graphene.
The advanced engineering materials group recorded losses before tax of £1.8m, up from £0.9m in 2015.
Revenues declined 10% from £4.98m to £4.4m, with improved sales at its thermal products arm failing to offset a drop in Hard Wear products unit.
Its tungsten carbide business took a hit from the downturn in the oil and gas sector, reporting sales for the year to end March of £3.1mln compared to £4.6mln in 2015, but it said all three of its divisions, hardware, thermal and graphene, had made progress.

Sales at the former, which manufactures microporous copper foam, improved from £0.4m to £1.3m, benefitting from the purchase of its heat sink business in February 2015.
In parallel, Hard Wear product sales were hit by the adverse environment in the oil and gas market, although new opportunities were emerging in defence and aerospace, the company said in a statement.
The unit makes sintered tungsten carbide business for "arduous environment" applications, primarily in Oil&Gas.
Since the end of the reporting period, the company had closed four partnerships to introduce its grapheme products into four key markets: batteries, carbon fibre products and enhanced composites for 3D printing and the aerospace industry.
It had also negotiated its first OEM contract for the use of low profile copper foam heat sinks in consumer devices.

Cash at period end was down from £3.5m one year ago to £1.6m, with £1.26m having been funneled into operating activities and another £276,000 towards the purchase of intangible assets.
Regarding the company's outlook, the board said it remained confident it was on track to benefit from progress made, saying that graphene was moving quickly towards commercial applications, while thermal products had moved into commercial production.
As of 15:56 BST shares in AIM-listed Versarien were 6.38% down to 11.0p.