China Limits Magnesium Production, Causing Supply Chain Constraints

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China, the world’s top producer of magnesium, has severely limited production of the metal hardener — used across the aluminum industries — since September, throwing global supply chains into disarray and threatening to further disrupt worldwide trade through 2022.

“Around 85 percent of the world’s magnesium production comes from China, and a large chunk of it from one town in Shaanxi province, Yulin,” the Financial Times reported on October 19.

In mid-September, local Communist Party officials in Shaanxi ordered roughly 35 of the province’s 50 magnesium smelters to close until the end of the year and directed the rest of Shaanxi’s magnesium smelters to cut production in half through the same time period. The province was forced to mandate the curbs after China’s federal government limited energy rations to factories nationwide.

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