The Economics of Tantalum, 10th edition 2009

There are mounting fears in the tantalum market that serious shortages are looming. Weak demand in consuming industries, particularly capacitors, coupled with large inventories in the supply chain, has kept tantalum prices low. Primary output has been slashed and processors are increasingly relying on stock drawdowns to make up the shortfall. If there is even a modest recovery in demand for tantalum in the near future, the market faces a difficult period.

A key issue is the continuing supply of low-cost columbite-tantalite (coltan) mined in Central Africa, mostly illegally, and sold to fund rebel militias. The major processors will not knowingly buy such material and almost all of it goes to China. The availability of large and growing quantities of cheap tantalum, at a time when global demand for consumer electronics is down and processors are holding substantial raw material stocks, has, however, placed the conventional tantalum industry under great pressure. Unable to win the large increase in prices it needed to be economic, the world's largest primary producer suspended mining operations in late 2008. It was soon followed by two others. Within the space of a few months, close to 40% of global primary tantalum capacity was taken out of the market. There are no guarantees as to when, or even if, it will be brought back into production.

The market will remain well-supplied for the time being. A key characteristic of the tantalum industry in recent years has been that supply has nearly always been greater than demand. As a result, large material inventories have been built up at most levels of the supply chain, generally as a result of take or pay contracts set up in the early part of the decade. Those stocks are not inexhaustible. In addition, the US strategic stockpile has gone for good and there are questions as how long tin slags can continue to constitute an important tantalum feedstock.

As has been the case in the past, processors are increasingly turning to scrap and other forms of secondary tantalum. Their receipts of secondary material grew by 70% in 2007 and by a further 25% in 2008. The growing use of scrap is evident in trade data.

The tantalum processing industry is attempting to develop systems to keep coltan out of the market by providing ways to physically indentify it before it is processed and becomes untraceable. Some processors are more committed to this than others, and the system is not yet fully in place, but the industry in general is facing mounting pressure from capacitor manufacturers and OEMs to ensure that coltan is not used. It is quite likely that the supply of coltan to the market will fall sharply over the next year or two. What will replace it? Production is being expanded in several countries but probably not by enough to replace coltan. Numerous new tantalum-niobium projects are in the pipeline and several would be very large producers. The big question is when they will come on-stream. Of the three mega-projects, one was originally planned to come into production in 2006, while another has been held up for over two years by red tape. The third may come into production in 2011.