Lead & Zinc

摘要

Demand for zinc from rapidly developing national economy keeps a high growth rate now and will remain in the future From 1998 to 2003, the apparent consumption of zinc in China saw an average growth of 12.3 percent yearly, even higher than the GDP growth. The apparent consumption reached 2.05 million tonnes in 2003, 1.77 times as much as that in 1998. At the same time, China exported a large amount of zinc ingot every year and the demand for zinc from home and abroad drives up concentrates consumption in China. From 1998 to 2003. Chinese output of zinc increased by 9 percent annually on average. Demand for zinc concentrates from smelters increased by 8.4 percent on average. But the growth rate of concentrates output was only 3.8 percent in the period. From 1995 to 2000, there was a intermittent tightness of concentrates supply in Chinese market. But there were still some exports of concentrates every year. In 2001, the supply of concentrates became much tighter because a large reduction of output occurred in domestic mines. The concentrates supply fell short even the export of concentrates was completely stopped. Situation went worse in 2003. Though there was an increase of concentrates output in the year, it could not meet the domestic consumption yet, nor to satisfy the extra demand resulted from the export of zinc ingot. The import" of zinc concentrates is increasing year by year, 380,000-390,000 tonnes (metal contained) were imported in 2002-2003 and about 400,000 tonnes in 2004.