Jacques Magliolo
IN ITS latest interim results Anglo American Industrial Corporation, controlling shareholder of Highveld Steel and Vanadium, assures shareholders that ”with an improvement in vanadium prices towards mid- year, world supply/demand appears to be approaching a balanced position.”
Few experts agree, saying that it will take years for the price of vanadium to rise high enough to affect demand and that until Red China stops dumping the product on world markets, it will remain oversupplied. Vanadium is a product used in industry to strengthen steel.
Latest statistics released by the Department of Mineral and Energy Affairs’ Minerals Bureau show that despite a drop in South African and international production, sales and exports of vanadium Pentoxide since 1989, there is still around 16,6-million tons in reserve.
Although some analysts indicate that actual production seldom equals full capacity — total world capacity is around 100 000 tons a year, but about 80 000 tons is potential production — minerals experts believe that for this amount of vanadium to be absorbed will require a sharp upturn in the world economy. Steel production must rise well above 850-million tons a year. Present production is around 725-millon tons.
The document states: ”This tonnage is unlikely to be achieved before the first half of the next decade, and even without the addition of new projects there is likely to be some 10 000 tons a year over capacity in the world vanadium industry.”