Tungsten prices continues up

BEIJING (Asian Metal) 28 Mar 05 - Pushed by the continuous tightness of tungsten conc supply, the price of tungsten products keeps rising, with current contracted ones around USD155/mtu for APT FOB CMP, while ten days ago, it was only around USD140/mtu.

"USD180/mtu is a minimum price for us to sell, although most of our APT output was consumed by us to further process into cemented carbide," an official from a major cemented carbide producer in South China told Asian Metal. Meanwhile, the source believed that contracted deals if any should be close to USD160/mtu, although lots of suppliers are quoting prices in a range of USD175-180/mtu. "We heard that one week ago, the concluded ones were over USD150/mtu, close to USD155/mtu."

"If for sales in domestic market, we do not accept a price of lower than RMB13,200/t for APT, although others quote prices of RMB12,000-13,000/t," said the source. The source thought that the deals should be around RMB12,500/t.Asian Metal Copyright The source thought that the deals should be around RMB12,500t.Asian Metal Copyright

However, since the end of this Spring Festival, the smelter did not sell any of its APT output. "We did produce quite less APT due to the great shortage of tungsten conc supply," said the source. "Tungsten conc suppliers are quoting prices over RMB70,000/t, even some as high as RMB80,000/t, with workable ones claimed to be around RMB75,000/t,"

With 10,000tpy production capacity of APT, the smelter produced around 6,000t APT in 2004