Indium market forces, a commercial perspective

The indium market is plagued by a paucity of data that would allow both suppliers and consumers to make accurate long range plans. This is a result of the markets relatively minute size and a limited number of participants that do not publish or share industry statistics. This is a typical problem for minor metals in thinly traded markets. On the demand side the most important consumer of indium is the market for transparent conducting oxide films (TCO´s), with the TFT-LCD industry being the largest consumer. TCO´s account for ~90% of worldwide indium consumption. Apart from the display industry indium is used in relatively small quantities in a wide range of niche applications. As with its use in LCD´s, indium accounts for a minor percentage of raw material cost in almost all products that consume it, making demand somewhat price inelastic. Added to this demand will be the projected use of indium in the photovoltaic market both as a semiconductor layer in CIGS panels as well as a transparent conductive layer in some CIGS & a-Si technologies. On the supply side this paper will review current primary and secondary indium production. Presently the secondary sources of indium, primarily scrap indium tin oxide (ITO) from LCD production, are much larger than primary sources. This discussion will separate the primary & secondary and compare available supply to the forecasted demand. As the minor metal designation implies, there are no indium mines in the world. Indium is extracted as an impurity in the production process of other metals, primarily zinc. As such, primary indium production is regulated by the demand & production of other elements. Various estimates of world indium reserves most likely overstate potential indium supply since the economics of indium (low price, diminutive market) do not justify an investment in indium extraction circuits in many smelting operations. In addition, extraction of one set of byproduct metals in a zinc production - - circuit may exclude the production of a different set. So a producer of zinc may rationally choose to produce gold, silver or bismuth, elements with large & stable markets, and allow indium units to go to the tailings heap. The conclusion may be that much higher prices will be required to attract investment in additional primary production to meet forecasted indium demands from PV markets.