ITRI’s conference in Penang last week attracted close to 300 delegates, substantially more than at our previous bi-annual international gatherings in recent years. One of the main themes running through the presentation programme was the need for investment in sustainable supply of tin. We have already published two separate stories about the major exploration and investment programmes being carried out by Yunnan Tin and Minsur, but many speakers spoke about the great challenges in bringing new mine projects on stream elsewhere in the world at current tin price levels. For example Michael Jansen of RK Capital noted the difficulties of both equity and debt financing for juniors, even though many investors would like to get into tin. Meanwhile Dr Harald Elsner of Germany’s BGR forecast that from a long list of prospects only seven new mine projects were likely to go ahead up to 2020.
In other sessions there were some positive views from Alent on new applications for solders in the automotive sector and LED lighting, and an assessment by ITRI of long-term opportunities for tin use in energy-related applications. Speakers from the two main tin exchanges also talked about the markets and their own plans. Megain Widjaja of ICDX reported that over 35,000 tonnes of tin valued at US$814 million had been traded in the first nine months since Indonesia’s new export regulation took effect at the end of last August (the cumulative total now exceeds 40,000 tonnes). He argued that the regulation had had a positive impact on the Indonesian tin industry and contributed to reduced volatility in global tin prices. Meanwhile Bonnie Liu of HKEx/LME said that tin would be in a second tranche of RMB-denominated mini contracts to be launched shortly. Other important papers covered the success of the industry in creating a conflict-free supply chain, with the iTSCi programme now covering around 80% of tin concentrate exports from Central Africa, a downstream user’s perspective from Intel, a review of environmental and socio-economic issues in Indonesia and several contributions on supply from Myanmar.
ITRI is grateful for the support of everyone involved in organising, sponsoring, presenting and attending and is already considering plans for further major industry gatherings. Conference delegates will be contacted soon for their feedback as part of this planning process.
