Tungsten: An Industrial Metal With Unstable Supply
This infographic is sponsored by Largo Resources Ltd.
Tungsten is unique in its extremes. It’s extremely hard, heat resistant, dense, and environmentally benign. It’s used to make cemented carbide, one of the strongest and most durable compounds.
Tungsten’s supply is dominated by China, who has significant influence on its price. China holds 2/3 of Tungsten’s world reserves and produces 60,000 of the world’s 72,000 tonnes per year.
Beautiful graphic!
Kudos to your denisty representation graphic, brilliant.
By the way, of late, most of the Investor Education pieces have a common story: China’s dominance. Is there any other story that can be told without China’s influnce, or is this just a sign of the times?
This is a good article on China’s supply dominance:
http://bit.ly/J04sHZ
The article alludes to the strategy behind China monopolizing the supply chains of rare earths, tungsten, antimony, graphite, etc.
Another interesting point is that China has different labour and environmental standards. With rare earths in particular this has some interesting implications. There are many rare earth deposits throughout the world, but because mining safety and environmental regulation is lax in China it makes it easier for the Chinese to exploit their deposits.
There are stories that don’t have a lot to do with Chinese supply dominance – but at the end of the day Asia is the manufacturing centre of the world and China’s economy is soon to be the biggest. This means – like the US – they will be a part of almost any story in some way!
Awesome work guys. Very informative I learned a fair amount about tungsten quickly from this infographic. I have several junior tungsten stocks on my radar.
Cheers,
James Fraser
Another use of tungsten: gold bars
http://www.tungsten-alloy.com/tungsten-alloy-scan-gold-coin.html