According to statistics by China Customs, import volume and £¦#118alue of manganese increased sharply in the first quarter of 2008. Gross import volume was 1,793,577 tonnes up by 30% from 1,375,873 tonnes of first quarter of 2007. Soaring manganese ore price makes import £¦#118alue change more severely from USD 154,065,587 to USD 638,458,772 which was 4.14 times of the previous year.

According to statistics China¡¯ manganese ore importing seems to have more origins as compared with 2007. We notice that there were 13 countries exported manganese ore to China in the first three months of 2007, while the number of exporters just doubled in 2008. 8 Countries provided more than 10,000 tonnes for China in first quarter of 2007 and the number increased to 12 in 2008. Australia, South Africa and Gabon are still chief suppliers, but their proportion in the total volume slightly decreased from 85% to 79%.

Higher price, more powerful demand, larger number of imports and more origins are not only the feature of China¡¯s manganese ore imports in the first quarter of 2008, but would also be the main theme in the whole year.

Sourced from ferro-alloys.com