broker comment sp angel22 Feb 2019 20:48
Is tin the unloved new energy metal?
• Presentation at the Lithium and Battery Material conference held in Perth March 2018 by the head of Rio Tinto’s Venture group revealed tin as the surprising #1 metal impacting new technologies.
• Findings from a Massachusetts Institute of Technology (“MIT”) study indicate the steady, rising trend of tin consumption in electronics and strong new indications of use in emerging technologies. Coupled with a static supply curve, prices are expected to continue strengthening.
• Primary use of tin is in chemical and tinplating industries, with the metals application as an electrical contact material in the form of solder puts tin in centre stage as the world electrifies. • For instance, tin use as a component in improving the productivity of lead-acid batteries has risen to the 4th most significant application in the global market. Global consumption climbed to 26,000t annually in 2016 (China 12,000t) in an industry supplied with 280,000t.
• The wildcard battery metal is also yielding very positive properties for inclusion in solid-state batteries utilising ceramic electrolyte.
• The International Tin Association (“ITA”) go further to identify nine technology opportunities for tin in rechargeable batteries, mainly in high-capacity anode electrode materials and sodium-ion chemistries.
S.P. Angel – Morning View – continued
Please, see disclaimer at the of this document
S.P. Angel, Prince Frederick House 35-39 Maddox street, London W1S 2PP, United Kingdom www.spangel.co.uk
• Researchers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign recently announced a performance break-through for innovative 3D tin electrodes, which offer several times the energy of current commercial iterations.
• The new electrodes use a production-compatible electroplating process to coat a 20% tin layer onto a 3D nickel scaffold. Measured capacity by volume was 1,352 mAhc/m3, approaching ever closer the theoretical capacity for tin of 1,991 mAhc/m3, and 2.5x practical capacity of graphite anodes.
• Prices have steadily climbed, rising from $18,750/t in November 2018 to current levels of $21,275/t – a 13.5% rise. • The climb appears to be stimulated by the return of instability in the world’s top exporter, Indonesia, as the stateowned PT Surveyor Indonesia is currently being investigated by the police for allegedly “accommodating utilising, processing and refining, transporting (and) selling" minerals from sources without permits. In turn, tin trading was suspended by the Indonesia Commodity and Derivatives Exchange (ICDX) of any material passed through Surveyor Indonesia's books.
• It's a throwback to the past, when the Indonesian government's attempts to tighten its grip on the country's independent tin sector regularly disrupted export flows.
• Indonesia’s shortfall coincided with a major downturn in tin raw material supply from Myanmar, which dominates feedstock for China’s tin smelters ov
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