Following a record high last year - driven by demand from the semiconductor and aviation industries - the price of hafnium has stabilised at a high level after a brief setback.
What is the background to this development?
The massive increase in the price of hafnium at the end of 2022 is primarily due to the sharp rise in demand from the aviation industry. While aircraft manufacturers were forced to hold back on orders during the coronavirus pandemic, in the last two years they have had to place orders, in some cases at short notice, due to the renewed increase in airline passenger numbers. stock up on raw materials. This boom has come to an end and large aviation companies are instead concluding more long-term purchase agreements, says Frank Meier, an expert in technology metals at the raw materials supplier TRADIUM. Short-term peaks in demand in this field are unlikely, at least in the near future.
This also applies to the second major area of application, the chip industry. Hafnium tetrachloride is used here as a coating for microchips. After record sales in 2022 - also driven by the previous supply bottlenecks caused by the pandemic - the semiconductor industry is currently weakening, which is likely to ultimately affect demand for hafnium. In August of this year according to the news agency Bloomberg However, positive momentum is returning to the market, which points to rising demand for semiconductor chips. This development is being strongly driven by the artificial intelligence segment, which requires high computing power. TSMC, one of the world's most important chip manufacturers, now generates more than half of its revenue from high-performance computing, so Bloomberg.
However, TRADIUM expert Meier also points out that the production of Hafnium has now been expanded and more of the raw material is therefore available to the market. This is ultimately also having an impact on the price of hafnium, which has now stabilised at a level that is still well above the five-year average.
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