Ningxia Orient Nanko Co.,Ltd is a subsidiary owned by Ningxia Orient Tantalum Co., Ltd, focusing on producing green silicon carbide powder. The company began the research and production of silicon carbide powder from 1998. Ningxia Orient Tantalum Industry Co.Ltd is a base of high-tech enterprises and national high-tech research development plan and results approved by Ministry of Technology and Science of China. It is the first national post-doctoral workstations in Ningxia. Parks of new materials and Ningxia key laboratory of special materials are located here. Now it is the largest tantalum and niobium production base and research and development center.

Li Fengguang, General Manager of Ningxia Orient Nanko Co., Ltd, recently gave an exclusive interview to asianmetal.com. 

Asian Metal: Hello, Mr Li. First I should thank you for accepting Asian Metal’s interview. Please share your opinion on the current macroeconomic situation and the trend in the near future.

Mr Li: To be frank, I personally believe that the macro-economy is still very slow. Though the Chinese government has issued many policies to drive up domestic demand, China depends on the export market heavily. More than half of GDP growth is supported by exports.

The domestic market is getting better, but we have not seen significant improvements to the export oriented enterprises. The demand from American and European market keeps sluggish.

The green silicon carbide market has not been driven up by the domestic demand greatly, but the prices of raw materials were pushed up recently. Petroleum coke increased from RMB500-600/t ex works to RMB1,300-1,500/t ex works, which will cause the green silicon carbide prices to increase by more than RMB1,000/t.

Asian Metal: What’s the relation between export and domestic sales？

Mr Li: We plan to export 4,000t every year, but the export volume this year is small. In the past years, we exported 1,000t of black silicon carbide every year when we are the subsidiary company of Orient Tantalum Industry Co. Ltd, but we received very few orders from overseas consumers and agents.