Zinc, the world’s most important metal is set to boom

After lithium and cobalt, Zinc is set to make headlines.

Right now, there is a silent but aggressive search for new supplies of zinc as demand surges on the world market. A media release yesterday drew investors at the New York Stock Exchange to watch Zinc miners Hecla Mining Company, Newmont Mining Corporation, Eldorado Gold Corporation, Teck Resources Limited and Silver Wheaton Corporation.

“There is no commodity as essential and yet unknown as zinc, a metal that plays a central role in everything from infrastructure to military technology and even health care. But zinc will soon come out of the shadows, as a serious supply deficit looms and demand continues to grow,” said the release distributed by OilPrice.com

The last two years have seen several millionaire-maker metals breakout, with both lithium and cobalt experiencing unprecedented growth. Now it is zinc’s turn to enter a super-cycle, and the similarities cannot be ignored.

“And it’s not just that supply is low and stockpiles are diminishing-it’s that demand is set to soar.

Major miners have been shuttering production and taking tons of zinc offline because prices were depressed between 2008 and 2015. But 2016 was an entirely different story. We burned through the stockpiles, and the mines remain shuttered, and some of them depleted,” said the release.

Already in 2016 zinc smelting demand outpaced mine production, and end-use demand outpaced smelting production and mine production combined. This is the beginning of the raging bull market.

It was reported that China is going through record amounts of zinc, and American plans to spend a billion on infrastructure and military defense build-ups mean that zinc-though it’s been used for ages-is more than ever our most vital go-to metal.

Zinc is a material that has gone through substantial changes in the way that it is used and in the way that it is perceived, both by specialists and by the general public according to azom.com. The broad categories of end use remain much the same, including coatings to protect iron and steel, brass, zinc alloy castings, sheet for building applications and a range of chemical applications. However, within these broad areas, there are major differences in process and product which have given a new lease of life to what could otherwise have become a rather boring traditional material.

According to Pistol Bay Mining, Zinc is a $34 billion per year market. It’s bigger than the silver ($18 billion), platinum ($8 billion), and molybdenum ($5 billion) markets combined. In fact, it is the fourth-most used metal worldwide.

Zinc has been one of the best-performing metals in 2016 in terms of price, it started the year around $0.70/lb, but now it trades for $1.04/lb.