In early May, a black Audi A6 slowly stopped in front of a reporter somewhere in the south of Zhejiang Province. Zhang Ming from the north (a pseudonym) is burly, with a pair of black lenses on his glasses, flipping upwards, quite a bit of fashion.
Zhang Ming’s identity is the vice president of a local private fluorine chemical company, focusing on investment work. As soon as he got in the car, Zhang Ming began to talk excitedly about his recent experience in acquiring fluorite mines. This was his main job since the second half of last year. He pointed to the odometer and said: "This was the car mentioned in October last year. It was driving it everywhere to see mines." The reporter looked down at his fingers and the number on the odometer was 80,000 kilometers.
The price rose more than 3 times in a year and a half
Fluorite is an ore, its main component is calcium fluoride, and calcium fluoride is the basic raw material for downstream metallurgy, fluorine chemical industry and other industries. However, this ore resource is not only non-renewable but also very limited. The No. 1 Document of the General Office of the State Council in 2010 announced the control of the mining and production of fluorite ore.
As a result, the price of fluorite powder, a primary processed product of fluorite, showed a linear upward trend, rising from 900 yuan/ton in 2010 to nearly 3,000 yuan/ton currently. This is only a real economy. The amplification of the capital market has pushed the fluorite concept to the cusp of the storm. Fluorine-listed companies such as Juhua and San Aifu in the A-shares are all sought after by the market. Although listed companies do not own fluorite resources themselves, they only use fluorite and its primary products as raw materials, but the market is They have the expectation of integrating fluorite resources.
For outsiders, the price of fluorite ore and its primary product, fluorite powder, has experienced tremendous growth. The future price trend seems to be facing a lot of uncertainty. However, from the survey conducted by the reporter, all of the industry’s People seem to think that the current price is still too low.
Wu Faguang, chairman of Jinhua Oriental Fluorite Corp., joined the fluorite industry in 1969 and is currently in a semi-retirement. He is a legendary figure in the industry and has a strong influence in the industry. "Now the price of refined flour is about 3,000 yuan/ton, equivalent to 1.5 yuan/jin, which is cheaper than cabbage. Is this expensive?" he asked the reporter.
In 1950, Oriental Fluorite was the first fluorite mine in New China to resume production. In the nearly half a century thereafter, Oriental Fluorite has been a banner of state-owned enterprises in the industry. From the 1990s to the beginning of this century, Oriental Fluorite finally became a new owner because of the low price of fluorite, depletion of fluorite resources and competition from local private companies.
Wu Faguang told reporters: “In the past, the fluorite market was very confusing. Many people were chasing fluorite mines privately. The market has been oversupply and the price has been low. The export price of the fluorite market in the 1980s was US$58/ton. In the whole country, 1.3 million tons can be exported, and the fine powder for export at that time was very demanding and must be the highest grade.Now it is different, the price is more than 580 US dollars/ton, it is not the top powder, it is the third and fourth powder foreigners want."
In order to protect fluorite resources, China began to implement an export quota licensing system for fluorite since 1999 and has continued to this day. In 2003, the fluorspar export tax rebate rate was 13%. By 2008, it would have to levy an export tariff of 15%. Changes in tax policies alone have increased the export costs of fluorite by nearly 30%.
In the domestic market, the decrees to tighten supply are one after the other. In February 2010, after the documents of the General Office of the State Council were issued, relevant ministries and commissions such as the Ministry of Land and Resources, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology announced the “Entry Standard for Fluorite Industryâ€, which established a high standard for fluorite mining and production. In May of the same year, the Ministry of Land and Industry and the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology issued separate control indicators for fluorite mining and production in 2010, with a total mining volume of 11 million tons. In 2011, the control indicators for fluorite mining and production were further tightened to 10.5 million tons.
"No, no, you listen to me, this price does not include shipping costs, 2850 yuan per ton, it can't be cheaper anymore." Once in the house, Zhou Aima, chairman of Zhejiang Wuyi Shenlong Flotation Co., Ltd., kept on and on. The buyer at the other end of the phone explained that the price of refined flour is no longer a negotiable bargaining chip. “We can sign long-term orders with customers, but only guarantee the supply, the price is not fixed, and the current market price is raised by RMB 200/ton per month. ."
The reduction in supply will inevitably bring about an increase in prices, and the rapid increase in downstream demand will also fuel the price of fluorite powder. Zhou Aima told the reporter: “The launch of fluorite prices was not entirely affected by the policy. As early as 2007, the price of fluorite had already risen, because the downstream fluorochemical workers developed at that time, if there was no fluorochemical worker. Depending on the previous use of metal smelting, opening a fluorite mine will never have its current price. It can only be said that it is earning hard money."
Zhang Ming expressed his sympathy for the prosperity brought by the fluorine chemical industry to the upstream fluorite industry: “I think the price of fluorite ore continues to rise. Fluorite is not a precious metal. It has huge industrial demand downstream, and fluorine chemicals are in China. Just after I started, the demand I could see was very strong. As long as the fluorochemical workers continue to develop, the price of fluorite powder will remain at least strong.
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Concerns about safe mining
“The world fluorite is in China, China’s fluorite is in Zhejiang, Zhejiang fluorite is in Jinhua, and Jinhua’s fluorite is in Wuyi.†This has long been a consensus spread in the fluorite industry.
In 1917, China's first fluorite mine was mined in Wuyi; during the Japanese occupation, about 2,000 northeastern laborers plundered Japanese fluorite mines in Wuyi; in the mid-1990s, Wuyi had more than 100 fluorite locals. Mines; Currently, 40% of the country's fluorite mining scale and construction scale are from Zhejiang. But now, the fluorite industry in Zhejiang, represented by the Wuyi region, is suffering from the pain caused by its own development. Due to local government concerns about the safety and environmental protection conditions of fluorite mines, the mining of local fluorite mines is subject to many restrictions.
As of early May 2011, there were 297 fluorite mines in Jinhua, including 3 large-scale mines and 7 medium-sized mines. The reserve of resources was about 9.19 million tons, but most of the mines were in production or semi-discontinued state. Even in 2010, when the price of fluorite was high, only 12 mines in the city of Jinhua were in normal production. The output of fluorspar was only 169,300 tons, even not reaching the production quota of 220,000 tons.
Huang Zhiqun, director of the mine management department of the Bureau of Land and Resources of Jinhua City, told the reporter that the local government’s policy is to close down one of the mining permits due to the expiration of the safety or environmental protection issues. The relevant departments need to take great responsibility, but a non-profit exploration behavior When the derived mining rights are sold, the fiscal revenue is also several million yuan. For the government, the risks and benefits are not proportional.
The local government's efforts to shut down local fluorite mines are impressive. A county government under the administration of Jinhua has used extraordinary means to interrupt the supply of explosives and forced the closure of fluorite mines that have not yet expired.
Jinhua’s local government’s attitude toward fluorite mines tightened local fluorite supply, directly leading downstream fluorinated workers to import fluorite powder from abroad. In 2010, Jinhua City's mineral processing companies consumed more than 1 million tons of fluorspar fines, of which only the major 4 major fluorine chemical companies need to consume 400,000 tons of ore fines, and thus calculate that the local fluorspar mine production capacity has not yet been shut down. Can no longer meet the needs of major local companies.
Huang Zhiqun told reporters: “We started to take control of the total amount of fluorite mining from June 23, 2010. The province’s approval of the new fluorite mining rights requires at least six elements, otherwise it will not be accepted. But we He also has a doubt that it is felt that the demand for fluorite in the domestic downstream industries such as fluorine chemical workers should still be protected. The environment must be protected and resources must be protected. Is downstream industry similarly protected?
In fact, Jinhua and its subordinate Wuyi District have very good reasons for the strict restrictions on the mining of fluorite. According to rough statistics, in the ten years of the 1990s, the number of deaths caused by safety accidents in the Wuyi area due to the mining of fluorite mines exceeded 200. This is undoubtedly a great pressure for local governments.
As the head of Wuyi’s local private fluorspar company, Zhou Aima is extremely sensitive to safety. “The Jinhua and Wuyi governments are not very supportive of the fluorite mine because of the safety factors. There used to be a lot of small mines and the investment was not in place. The normative companies are a bit better, and I now put more than 20% of operating income into safety every year. , environmental protection and rehabilitation aspects." Said Zhou Aima.
At present, there are more than 1,000 fluorite mining enterprises nationwide, and small mines with an annual output of 3,000 tons to 5,000 tons of ore account for most of them. According to the local fluorite mine owners, a fluorite mine that operates in a standard and can bring profits, It needs a certain scale, and thousands of tons of small mines cannot meet the requirements of standard production. Therefore, the actual fluorite mining and flotation industry can only be described as small, scattered, and chaotic.
Wu Faguang said: “The fluorite mine is not like a coal mine. Its reserves for each vein are limited, and the government’s earlier stipulation of the mining period is 3 years. The time limit is too short. The mining company does not know whether it will still be mined by itself after 3 years. As a result, many mines are desperately trying to mine high-grade mines. Businesses are all economic accounts, and they are certainly unwilling to invest in safety and environmental protection. This has caused tremendous waste of resources and potential safety problems."
What is more, some unscrupulous operators, in order to make profits, adopt measures that only report a small amount of production capacity and are in fact extremely over-exploited to avoid resource taxes and mandatory safety and environmental protection inputs. This not only seriously interferes with the accuracy of the country’s statistical data on the production of fluorite products, but also eliminates invisible parts of the non-productive costs that should have been linked to the quantity of production.
Compared with the government's one-off, as fluorite prices rise, fluorite companies' own profitability has gradually increased, and some responsible companies have gradually increased their investment in safety and environmental protection. Some companies in the industry are trying to get out of the quagmire of low-price, low-quality competition, but as a local fluorite mine owner in Zhejiang said: “The stability of fluorite prices at the current high level is a necessary condition for maintaining such efforts. ."
It is not easy for downstream companies to enter
As prices continue to rise and the industry is gradually standardizing, is it that the downstream fluorine chemical companies, especially listed companies, are ushering in an opportunity to enter the fluorspar industry? To find the answer to this question is probably more difficult than you think.
Jinshi Resources Group Co., Ltd. has the largest and second largest fluorite ore identified in the country in the past 20 years and is the largest fluorspar mine in China with the largest fluorite reserves. However, compared to its huge resource reserves, Jinshi Resources' office space in Hangzhou is extremely low-key and simple.
Zhao Jinhua, vice president of Jinshi Resources, told the reporter: “Although fluorite resources and fluorine chemicals are an interlocking industrial chain, the downstream fluorine chemical companies are not easy to enter the upper reaches of the industry. Fluorine chemical companies know very little about the fluorite industry. From mountain to mountain, it often encounters technical difficulties in the production processes such as beneficiation and purification, but this is a very simple issue for our long-term specialized fluorite mining companies.â€
Zhao Jinhua may not be boasting. Due to the long-term destructive exploitation, the reserves of many fluorite deposits in Zhejiang are near exhaustion. Due to the lack of higher-grade ore, the era of the original 1.3 tons to 1.4 tons of ore can float 1 ton of fine powder is no longer gone. At present, many flotation plants in Zhejiang require more than 4 tons of raw ore to flotate 1 ton of fines. The lower the raw ore grade, the higher the requirement for flotation technology.
In addition to the low raw ore grade, the fluorspar tailings after flotation generally still contain 13% to 15% of calcium fluoride components in the process. Currently, some of the more advanced flotation companies can reprocess the tailings. 50% of the remaining calcium fluoride is re-extracted. In the case of high fluorite prices and generally low fluorite ore grades, it is indeed a major advantage of fluorite companies to have strong technical strength and experience.
Regardless of technical issues, from the economic point of view, entering the fluorite industry through new construction does not seem to be so attractive. Zhou Aima told the reporter: “Now a mine with an annual output of more than 10,000 tons, the replacement cost includes various administrative approvals of at least tens of millions of yuan. Even if the grade of ore is very good and can be sold at 1,000 yuan/ton, it also requires 2 years or 3 years to return to this, and as far as I know, the same amount of investment in the downstream hydrofluoric acid plant can be recovered in 1 year or so. It is understood that because of the approval of environmental protection authorities, not every A company with mining rights can build a fluorite flour flotation plant.
The gap between hydrofluoric acid and fluorite is only one step. The gap between the prices of the two products is still only a few times. From the hydrofluoric acid down to the fluorine chemical industry, the higher the production value of the back-end products, sometimes the raw materials and products The spread between the tens of times.
Li Ai’s secretary-general Li Li used an image metaphor for reporters: “The prices of our products are basically tens of thousands, and most of them are more than 100,000. The price of fluorite is in thousands, if Fluorite rose 10%, I also rose 10%, not only can cover the rise of fluorite, but also have more profit margins.So, having fluorite resources is a guarantee for the listed company's industrial chain, but the current fluorite The rise in prices will not affect the performance of the company."
An executive from a local fluorine chemical listed company who declined to be named also agrees: “In the fluorinated industrial chain, the cost of fluorite mines is relatively small and will not constitute a cost pressure on the company. On the contrary, the fluorine chemical industry It is worthwhile to enjoy the current status of the fluorite industry as a small scattered industry. Listed companies are not very interested in buying fluorite companies because the potential risk of acquiring a fluorite mine is too great."
However, although listed companies do not catch cold on fluorite mines, the private mining transaction is still quite active. In Wuyi, a traditional fluorite producing area, many local mine owners have begun to buy minerals all over the country. Among them, Fujian, Inner Mongolia and Jiangxi are among the most popular investment destinations.
Zhang Mingzui, who has just acquired two fluorite mines, said: “Now Fujian has more recoverable reserves. Many people have gone there. However, we have to investigate two conditions of the mine. One is to have an attached float. Plant selection, because the grade of ore is very low now, the long distance transportation of ore does not come; second, the annual mining quota must be sufficient, I feel a little too small 20,000 tons, and listed companies, most of the operation of the mine is not standardized The listed companies may want to make the purchased mine specifications work, and may not be as convenient as buying the flour directly on the market."
When Zhang Ming’s voice did not fall and the cell phone ringing tone rang, Zhang Ming skillfully took out his notebook and jotting down the basic information of four fluorite mines. He raised his head and smiled at reporters: “It seems that I will go again. It is in Inner Mongolia."
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