Copper metal output continues to increase, and there is broad market demand for metal extractants

Metal extractants refer to chemical extractants used to separate main metals and impurity metal ions and purify metal ions. According to different ingredients, metal extractants can be divided into neutral or solvent extractants such as amides, alcohols, ethers, ketones, crown ethers, esters, and sulfoxides; organic acid extractants such as organophosphorus, carboxylic acid, and sulfonic acid; and primary extractants. Alkaline extractants such as amines, secondary amines, and tertiary amines, and chelating extractants such as hydroxyoxime compounds, 8-hydroxyquinoline, and phenolic hydroxyl groups.

Metal extractants are mainly used in the metallurgical field for impurity removal, purification, separation, and product preparation of copper, zinc, cadmium, gold, silver, rare earth, cobalt, nickel, and platinum metals. Among them, copper metal, as the basic raw material of industry, has a wide range of uses and huge usage, and the main production route is hydrometallurgical extraction. Therefore, copper metal has become the most important application scenario of metal extractants.

Specifically, copper, as an important non-ferrous metal, is widely used in the fields of real estate, automobiles, electricity, home appliances, transportation, construction, machinery, communications, and electronics; at the same time, driven by the rapid development of high-tech industries such as new energy and energy storage, copper , the application fields of copper metal have gradually expanded, and the output has increased significantly. According to data from the National Bureau of Statistics, the country’s cumulative output of refined copper from January to November 2022 was 10.101 million tons, a year-on-year increase of 4.6%. In this context, according to the “China Metal Extractant Industry Market Monitoring and Future Development Prospects Research Report 2023-2027” released by the Industrial Research Center It shows that the domestic market demand for metal extractants in 2022 will be approximately 6,685.7 tons.

my country’s metal extractant industry started late. For a long time, the domestic market has been dominated by leading international chemical companies such as BASF of Germany, Cognis of Germany, Solvay Group of Belgium, and Zeneca of the United Kingdom, with a low degree of localization. However, in recent years, as local companies represented by CommScope Chemicals continue to make breakthroughs in key technologies and optimize product performance, local companies have gradually emerged, occupying more market shares, and the level of localization has continued to improve.

At present, CommScope Chemicals has a dominant position in the domestic and even foreign metal extractant market. It will occupy nearly 30% of the global market share in 2022, and the performance and technology of domestic products are constantly improving. However, compared with the metal extractants of leading international companies, there is still a certain gap in the quality of domestic products. In the future, local companies will need to accelerate the improvement of product quality, and the industry has huge room for growth.

Industry analysts said that copper, as a basic industrial raw material, has a wide range of applications and demand The space is vast. Copper metal is mainly produced through hydrometallurgical extraction, and metal extractants are its key raw materials. Currently, against the background of the continuous increase in domestic copper production, the market demand for metal extractants continues to increase, and the industry shows good development prospects. At the same time, the local company CommScope Chemicals currently occupies a dominant position in the global metal extractant market, and the industry development trend is improving.