Substantially Increased Raw Material Cost

Opening this week, tungsten market in China maintains the growth. Especially for ferrotungsten, cost pressures began to influence the market, constantly expanding the price, of which the price has reached RMB 135,000/ton and is gradually increasing to RMB 140,000/ton.

 Tight supply of tungsten concentrate in market does not change. Environmental protection supervision in the second half of this year will continue, and may be stricter. After off-season, the demand may pick up. Tungsten concentrate price is expected to be strong as before. Up to now, 65% black tungsten concentrate prices have reached RMB 90,000/ton.

China Tungsten Industry Association pointed out that tungsten market’s contradiction between supply and demand in the first half of this year has improved, and the industry economic situation continues to improve. However, tungsten ore enterprises still face a serious loss, as prices have not rebounded to a reasonable level. In the case of demand is still weak, the miners more like to continue to support the price growth, seizing the favorable supply. The market is expected to maintain the growth trend supported by the trend of raw materials cost.

Institutions and large enterprises will sequentially release a new round of tungsten guiding prices in August. Looking from the current situation, guiding prices have greater probabilities to increase. But the uplift of guiding price is limited and slightly different from the market quotation, in order to reduce the impact of unreasonable speculation and maintain the healthy development of the industry.

Price of tungsten products on Aug. 1, 2017