China's ferro-chrome market has been rising, with incremental increases in its annual output since 2015, and that momentum has extended despite the market being faced with a series of challenges in the first half of the year.
This includes a wave of Covid-19-related production cuts and the supply disruptions to South Africa's chrome ore and while the market approaches the second half of 2020, the momentum in ferro-chrome production seems to have resumed, market participants said. At least three of the top ten ferro-chrome producers told Fastmarkets that they are on track to increase their high-carbon ferro-chrome capacities by approximately 200,000-300,000 tonnes per year, with the earliest one due to start two large-sized furnaces in one or two months time."We are starting two 36,000 [KiloVolt-Ampere] KVA furnaces in August or September and one 42,000 KVA furnace in mid-October. Concurrently, two 60,000 KVA furnaces are being planned to open next year," the smelter said. Meanwhile, another large ferro-chrome producer told Fastmarkets that they are planning to increase capacity by 300,000 tonnes to reach 1.6 million tpy by the end of this year.All of these smelters pointed out that...