Tin surging

Cassiterides, north of Iberia--presumed source of early tin.

There’s quite a lot about tin in my book—it’s found on at least 10 pages, and in things as diverse as toothpaste and type metal. There have been some recent changes in some of the salient facts about tin.

Whether or not there’s a recession, according to information cited in this Bloomberg article, we’re about to see nearly 2 billion new cell phones a year. Combine that with more flat-screen TVs and computers, digital cameras, and other electronics, and consumption of tin (mostly for solder) is surging. In my book I quote recent USGS reports that 28% of all the tin used goes to electronics. The Bloomberg article indicates that that value is now more than 50%.

No more than a gram of tin per cell phone, but multiply it by two billion and it all adds up. Production increases (estimated at 0.6% for 2012) are not keeping up with demand increases, and the price of tin could climb in 2012 from around $9-$10 per pound in 2010 to as much as $13 per pound. And consumption is projected to exceed supply by more than 10,000 tons in 2012.

Where does the US get its tin? Apart from recycling and processing scrap, the US imports all its tin. There has been no primary mine production of tin in the US since 1993. Principal suppliers are Peru (more than half our imported tin), Bolivia, China, and Indonesia. China produces almost half the world’s tin, and Indonesia is #2 with almost one-fourth. In addition to electronics, there's tin in your car, in cans and containers (including glass and plastic ones--organotins reduce scratching in plastic), and in toothpaste (stannous fluoride -- stannum is Latin for tin, whose chemical symbol is Sn).

The map here shows an early map of Europe with the Cassiterides, imaginary islands that the Greeks thought to be the source of Phoenician tin. In reality, the tin came from Cornwall, in southwestern Britain. Cassiterite, tin oxide, is the primary ore of tin.

Public domain image from Wikipedia.

Bolivia: Lithium capital?

I hope my April Fool’s Day post didn’t bother anyone! Today I thought I’d focus on one country: Bolivia. Bolivia has been in the news as the world’s largest supply of lithium, and increasing demand for lithium batteries in electric vehicles might mean the US will have to cozy up with a government that has not been exactly pro-US lately.

But wait. Bolivia doesn’t produce any lithium; the world production leaders are Chile and Australia, each with about a third of the world’s lithium, and China in third place with about 18%. Chile has half the world’s reserves and China has another quarter. Bolivia isn’t even on the list of producers or those with reserves. What’s up?

It’s the difference between resources and reserves. Reserves – what Chile and China have – are known, established deposits that can be mined economically with today’s technologies and at today’s prices. Resources are known, speculative, and possible deposits that might be producible sometime in the future. Huge lithium resources – a third of the world – are what Bolivia has (or may have).

Bolivia also has 6% of the world’s tin, 6% of the silver, 4% of the zinc, 2.5% of the lead, 2% of the antimony, 2% of tungsten, 1.5% of boron. Of all those, zinc is most valuable to Bolivians, contributing around $680 million a year to the national economy, more than silver ($610 million) and tin ($260 million). But Bolivia’s most valuable commodity is natural gas, accounting for most of the $880 million attributable to fuels.

The most important commodity imported by the US from Bolivia is tin. The US imports about 70% of its tin; the rest is not mined but is produced from recycled materials. Of 37,000 tons of tin imported by the US, 16% comes from Bolivia, placing it #2 as an import supplier after Peru, which supplies more than half the tin imported to the US.

Electrical applications use more than a quarter of our tin, well ahead of the #2 use in cans and containers.