China flexes critical metals muscles with export curbs

LONDON: China’s threat to curb exports of gallium and germanium from the start of August marks an escalation in the global competition for critical minerals and metals.

Both are esoteric metals with multiple applications across a spectrum of cutting-edge technologies, particularly silicon chips for the semiconductor sector.

As such, China’s move seems a calibrated response to the US Chips Act and the increasing pressure on US allies to restrict sales of sensitive microchip technology to the country.

The announcement a day before the US Independence Day holidays was a symbolically-charged reminder that the West is highly dependent on China for many raw material inputs to its high-tech industrial base. Export controls will be short-term disruptive to both gallium and germanium markets but Western countries should be able to adapt over time. The big question, however, is what might come next.

Both gallium and germanium are extremely rare metals and are derived only as by-products from the aluminium and zinc processing streams respectively. China’s supply-chain dominance results from the country’s status as the world’s largest producer of aluminium and refined zinc. Indeed its alumina refineries, which process bauxite into an aluminium smelting input, are required by the Chinese government to extract gallium.

China last year accounted for around 98% of the world’s production of low-grade primary gallium, the core feed-stock for the gallium supply chain, according to the United States Geological Survey (USGS). Exports last year were 94 metric tonnes, up 25% on 2021.

China’s control of the germanium supply chain is looser but still significant at around 60% of the global market, according to European industry association Critical Raw Materials Alliance (CRMA). Last year’s exports totaled 44 metric tonnes in both wrought and unwrought form.