If ever there was a time to acknowledge and try to understand the significant influence of Chinese policies on refractory mineral supply to western markets that time is now. The upshot is thar 2017 will be remembered as the «Year of the Perfect», or perhaps… «Imperfect Storm» – depending on whether one is a Western refractory mineral producer/developer or a Western consumer of Chinese refractory minerals, respectively.

The exact knowledge of the material properties of refractories in the region of their, usual very high, application temperatures is the key to their successful application as well as to the development of new refractory materials. A particularly important question is the behaviour of a refractory against thermal shock and thermal cycling. While many techniques and standards deal with changes between high temperature and room temperature, the more realistic load is often the fast change between two high temperatures. In this work, we explain the capabilities of a new ThermoOptical measuring device called TOM_wave, which was developed for hot thermal shock and thermal cycling tests and determination of further high temperature properties of refractories.

Rising raw material costs for the production of brown and white fused alumina in China are expected to push prices higher in the coming weeks, while intensifying anti-pollution control in Henan province will further compound supply constraints.

The company aims to have its fused magnesia line ‘up and running’ in Norway before year-end.

Austrian refractory maker RHI is aiming to restart fused magnesia (FM) production at its partially-mothballed facility in Norway in December, the company told IM.

After an initial announcement at the beginning of October, RHI said it is confident the FM production line at the Porsgrunn facility can be «up and running» in a short period of time.

«We are working to start up in December with a limited number of lines first. We will constantly evaluate the needs in terms of production volume to guarantee the supply to our customers,» RHI told IM.

The FM operation at the facility was mothballed in August 2016, on the back of weak market conditions that made the line uneconomical to run.

CCM production at the site meanwhile continued – which is the main reason behind the swift restart schedule RHI is pursuing, as workers have remained at the facility and operations have ticked over in the other manufacturing lines at the site.

Whether RHI’s Norwegian plant would start producing FM again has been a main point of discussion among industry players over the past few months, as the shortage of the material intensified in major consuming markets.

Prices of the material from both Chinese and European suppliers have reached new highs in October.

European FM increased further to $1,400-1,600/tonne, while all Chinese FM grades also appreciatedafter the Golden Week national holiday.

The Henan government has ramped up efforts to combat pollution by implementing yet more shutdowns of brown fused alumina production later this year. This is set to cause more global supply disruptions since output was already intermittent in recent months.

The government of Henan province in China will enforce large-scale brown fused alumina production stoppages from November 2017 – March 2018 in a bid to cut down pollution levels in the region, according to official documentation.

China is one of the biggest fused alumina producers in the world and Henan is a key fused alumina producing region.

Further output cuts will severely impact exports to the refractories and abrasive sectors globally, since production was already intermittent due to the past months of anti-pollution checks, market participants told IM.

According to the provincial capital Zhengzhou government, the province must meet the target of the environmental plan, it announced on 28 September.

Under the plan, the average concentration of particulate matter (PM2.5) between October 2017 and March 2018 must fall by 20% year-on-year, and the number of severe pollution days must also reduce by 15%.

By end of October, all steel and cement producers must complete their paperwork for emission licenses, while copper, zinc, lead smelters, aluminium, pharmaceutical and pesticide producers must obtain their licences by December 2017.

Companies releasing pollutants without licenses will be prosecuted, according to Zhengzhou government.

In a separate notice seen by IM, a list of 51 brown fused alumina producers across Zhengzhou, Jiaozuo, Luoyang,
Sanmenxia, Jiyuan, Gongyi and Lankao have been compelled by the government authority to shut down for a set period of time, between 15 November and 15 March 2018.

While it is not a blanket ban to all producers to shut down production in the next four months, 42 on the list are allowed to produce for one month in January 2018, while five have ceased operation indefinitely.

It is unclear when the environmental restrictions will end, but many market participants within and outside China believe that many small fused alumina producers will not survive this wave of checks. As a result, the total output in China could potentially drop in 2017.