The hard truth about tungsten alloy

May 1, 2012 - PRLog -- China’s grasp of rare-earth mining will keep them in production for some time to come.

Tungsten is a hard metal with numerous industrial uses ranging from the manufacture of light bulb filaments through to bullets，like tungsten wire, tungsten shot, tungsten counterweight. And with China accounting for 60 percent of global reserves and 85 percent of world output, it’s not surprisingly classified as a strategically important one in the West. There are many tungsten composites, like tungsten alloy, copper tungsten, tungsten carbide, sliver tungsten, etc. Among them, tungsten alloy are widely used.

Like rare earth metals – a group of 17 elements commonly used in high-tech applications such as laser-guided weapons, helicopter blades and hybrid-car batteries – tungsten is becoming part of a much wider problem that will likely see the US the EU and Japan lodge formal complaints against Beijing with the WTO.

Though China ‘only’ has an estimated 50 percent of the world’s rare-earth deposits Beijing controls more than 90 percent of current global supply and has persistently tightened export quotas in order to bump up prices. There have also been accusations of domestic stockpiling.
The Americans are miffed, arguing Chinese companies have been given an unfair advantage by increasing production costs for American firms that use these materials.

While mining companies around the world have responded by taking steps to ramp up production it can take years for a rare-earth producing mine to come on stream. Which means the Chinese will continue to have a market stranglehold.

The Chinese not surprisingly have cried foul, claiming they’ve been holding back supply for domestic ‘environmental reasons.’ The problem is, putting Beijing in charge of managing the environment is a bit like asking Count Dracula to oversee a blood bank.

Watch this space.


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