Zinc deficiency in China will increase in 2014

Consumer of zinc in the PRC can grow by more than 5 percent in 2014. This will be facilitated by the growth of the automobile sector and the ongoing urbanization of the country. In this regard, China will remain the world's largest zinc importer over the next 2 -3 years.

The growth of zinc consumption in China will support its cost on the London metals exchange, which this year has lost more than 5 percent of last year.

Speaking at the Beijing industry conference, the representative of the State Research Institute Antayka said that zinc deficiency will intensify against the background of growing demand from the Automobile and construction sector of the PRC, which accounted for 53 percent of the internal consumption of zinc and galvanized steel in 2012.

Antayka predicts that the consumption of a refined zinc in China in 2014 will reach 5 million 930 thousand tons, which is 5 percent more than the estimated consumption in the current year, estimated at about 5 million 560 thousand tons, which is also 4.6 percent higher than the APPG-2012.
The production of refined zinc in the PRC next year will reach 5 million 500 thousand tons. Thus, the lack of zinc in the Chinese market will be at the level of 450 - 500 thousand tons.

In the first three quarters of the current year, the PRC imported 414 thousand 864 tons of pure zinc, which is 10.56 percent higher than the APPG-2012 indicator. In China factories, the production of zinc for nine months amounted to 4 million 170 thousand tons, demonstrating an increase of 14.2 percent compared to last year. The growth of production of galvanized steel over this period reached 12 percent, the production of cars increased by another 15 percent.