Asian Metal visits China Sinopharm International Corporation

On May 7th, Victor Hoo, Senior Researcher from Asian Metal visits China Sinopharm International and shares the market opinion with Samuel Shen and Terry Tang from Sinopharm International Trade Dept.

China Sinopharm International Coporation is a wholly owned subsidiary of China National Pharmaceutical Group. It starts selenium business since 2011 and has already established co-operation with selenium suppliers from Germany, Mexico, India, Russia and Australia; besides it also has contacted those from Japan and Philippines. In domestic market, China Sinopharm also has relations to some glass producers.

Both sides are not very optimistic about selenium market in 2013. Currently, China Sinopharm still holds tons of selenium at hand, purchased before the prices declined to current low level. And it mentions that the offering prices from foreign suppliers are not favorable and the pricing is difficult to accept as the reference price is always higher than the actual market price and lags behind when the market changes. About the brands, China Sinopharm has some German selenium powder, whose purity is over 99.9% but the glass producers prefer Japanese selenium than the German selenium powder.

In the meantime, China sees abundant stocks of selenium while demand of the material is stagnant. In the first quarter, selenium import increased by over 10% while the demand was limited by the low production and low prices of manganese metal. And most insiders believe many importers are still holding large stocks as their import in 2012 does not run out. Asian Metal introduces the current manganese production in China and the consumption of selenium dioxide. Both sides realize that the cancellation of manganese export duty does not support manganese industry enough to promise a better market future, especially when the economic situation is not in good shape, and there might be still room for selenium prices to slide further in the coming months.