Following the successful launch of the new Tantalum Quarterly Review and Outlook in early March, CPM Group is pleased to announce that the first quarterly update to the report is now available. These quarterly reports enable clients to stay on top of tantalum market developments with the provision of more granular, detailed, and up-to-date tantalum research, information, data, and analysis than has been and is currently available elsewhere. Statistics and analysis about what the statistics mean are provided quarterly, bringing greater timeliness and transparency to what has always been an opaque market.

Our client base is growing rapidly and now includes tantalum miners (including lithium by-product), processors, and users.

The focus of these reports is on data that are only available via CPM’s Tantalum Practice, combined with CPM’s analysis of key factors affecting the tantalum market and price:

• The latest estimates of supply and demand,
• 10-year projections of supply, demand, and price, and
• Analyses of developments for individual producers, processors, and users of tantalum.

A key element is analysis of actual prices being paid for tantalum, based on information from a network of industry contacts. Real prices often vary quite widely from published prices. This analysis is unique to CPM Group. The report also includes a deep-dive analysis of international trade data, going beyond the raw customs statistics to look at the actual tantalum content of shipments, who the likely suppliers and buyers are, and what the true prices are.

Key elements of the Second Quarter update include:

• The latest trade and price data,
• Revised supply, demand and price forecasts, and
• Capacity expansions and other market developments during the quarter.

The report brings far greater clarity to the tantalum supply chain, including emerging suppliers, sourcing practices of the major processors, and industry capacity and bottlenecks. The outlook for tantalum demand is for strong growth across the coming decade, especially in electronics markets. Consumers of this critical technology metal will benefit from CPM’s detailed analysis of the capacity and responsiveness of tantalum supply.

This quarterly update includes a special feature. The recent report by Global Witness paints a grim picture of conflict minerals compliance in Central Africa. The report alleges malign behaviour by industry actors and gross failures in ITSCI’s “bag-and-tag” compliance scheme, supposedly leading to large volumes of conflict minerals escaping the compliance schemes relied upon by major global companies in their SEC and EU compliance reporting. The report has been strongly rebutted by both ITSCI and the T.I.C. We have looked closely at the numbers and formed our own views on the subject.

CPM Group is an independent commodities research, consulting, and investment banking advisory company headquartered in New York. The company is considered the foremost authority on markets for precious metals, along with manganese and molybdenum. The entry into tantalum research has been made possible by a new collaboration with Andrew Matheson and Patrick Stratton, who are both recognised experts in the tantalum market.

Andrew Matheson, the founder and principal of OnG Commodities LLC, has 25 years of experience in the tantalum industry, leading Cabot Corporation’s tantalum ore procurement and mineral development activities, as general manager of Cabot’s sputtering target business and serving as director of R&D. His experience includes a range of other specialty materials including niobium, scandium and rare earth metals.

Patrick Stratton spent 16 years with Roskill, where he led the tantalum research. His experience also covers niobium, gallium, magnesium metal and titanium. In addition to being the lead author of published research reports on these commodities, he has also undertaken many consulting assignments for producers, project developers, financial institutions and government bodies. He has an extensive network of industry contacts.

For more information, or to discuss how this report will benefit you, please contact:

tantalum@cpmgoup.com
www.cpmgroup.com