Resumen de Talk From The Top: : What those at the helm make of the last two years in industrial minerals markets
Industrial Minerals
In the past few years, the graphite market has been coming down dramatically, especially in the refractory market - quantity is reduced and price competition is very fierce. Therefore, we reduced output for refractory use regular flake graphite, middle carbon flake graphite, and high carbon flake graphite. However, on the other side, we have increased our output for specialised grades which have more value added, such as expandable graphite, high purity graphite and graphite sheet.
Prices for low grade expandable graphite, for regular grade spherical graphite and for high carbon flake graphite have also dropped due to raw material price drops and fierce competition. However, prices for high grade materials, like high grade expandable graphite, high grade high purity graphite and high grade spherical graphite remain very stable.
While the demand for metallic titanium for industrial applications falls, the consumption of titanium for the aerospace industry is on the contrary increasing steadily. Taking into account current market trends, ZTMC (Zaporozhye Titanium & Magnesium Combine, part of group DF) is gradually adjusting the structure of its product portfolio. Therefore, at the end of 2015 and the beginning of 2016, ZTMC reduced production volumes of metallic titanium for industrial applications and started a gradual reorientation for the production of titanium for aerospace applications with higher requirements. We expect that the demand for titanium sponge for aerospace application will continue to grow in the future. Furthermore, the production and sale of such products is more marginal.
