Resumen de Food for thought: : Global salt supply

Industrial Minerals

• Dampier Salt Ltd, located in WA and owned by Rio Tinto, accounts for the majority of Australia's salt production with a combined approximate output capacity of 10.3m tonnes, but produces about 8.5m tpa in total. Rio Tinto's 68% stake means that it produces 5.5m tpa, making it world's largest exporter of high-quality bulk, solar salt.

  Food grade salt demands a very different price to that paid for chemical grade and comes in a diverse array of 'flavours'. Murray River Salt, or SunSalt, produces a solar-evaporated gourmet salmon-pink salt from concentrated brine of the Mourquong Salt Mitigation Basin, located 13km north-west of Mildura in New South Wales and markets it on its distinctive colour, taste, flake texture and trace-mineral content.

  In the US, salt prices for their number one market segment, de-icing, are growing. All prices (average value of bulk, pellets and packaged salt, FOB mine and plant) were higher in 2016 coming in at $182/tonne for vacuum and open pan salt, $89/tonne for solar salt, $50/tonne for rock salt and $9.15/tonne for salt in brine.