The comparison, of course, is with Palladium that was languishing at approximately $40 per troy ounce ($1286 per kg) in the 1970s before European laws on emissions in vehicles came along to commercialise the metal. At $350 per toz +, who would give away palladium today?
So where will balance ultimately come from? The one area in the world where Rhenium was always husbanded and never lost was
in fact in the former Soviet Union. Here, their largest copper producer, Dzheskasgan in the middle of the Kazakh steppe, now
owned by Kazakhmys, floated on the London Stock Exchange in October 2005, produces about 450,000 tpy copper and generates about 8.5 mtpy of Rhenium (about 24% of primary supply) and has capacity to produce more. All might be well, you would think –
except that a political battle has been fought for upwards of ten years over the title of the Rhenium. Is it the miner and smelter who owns the Rhenium? Or is it the discrete rare earth plant, called ‘Dzheskasganredmet’ under the Ministry for Complex Recycling, and responsible for its final recovery, who owns it? Perhaps the floatation last year has brought matters into greater relief and Kazakhmys seeks to stamp its name on the world as the 2nd largest producer of Rhenium? Either way, the political battles are not over and little material has been exported for over a year.
The conclusion to reach is one that occurs from time to time in the life of every minor metal. Gradually, and to the blessing of the producer usually, commercial demands grow for a metal that was not the main nameplate metal of the plant in question. In the case of Rhenium this has happened, but at a rate that cannot be matched by a system of supply which could reasonably be described as sclerotic and rather better geared to preventing sulphur emissions than the recovery of Rhenium. In the case of Rhenium, recovery in Chile and Kazakhstan is motivated by the need to wet scrub flue dusts. In no part of the world therefore is Rhenium produced for itself. The challenge will be to find places where Rhenium is currently being lost and bring it back into the system. Bearing in mind Rhenium’s scarcity in the earth’s crust it is unlikely to come from finding a Rhenium mine – although, if this does happen, I will readily eat my Rhenium hat. Anthony Lipmann Chairman, Minor Metals Trade Association |
