Silicon social inventories shrink as deliveries improve

[ADC12 Daily Price Review: Spot ADC12 Edged Lower Slightly as Weak Demand and Raw Material Support Remained in a Tug-of-War] ADC12 market quotations overall consolidated on a subdued note today, with most enterprises cutting prices by 100 yuan/mt, mainly affected by a pull back in futures and primary aluminum prices, weaker end-use demand, and a slight downward shift on the cost side. However, the decline in aluminum scrap costs remained relatively limited, and the cost side still provided some support.

Kazakhstan's Kazchrome, the ferrochrome producer owned by Eurasian Resources Group, holds an internationally registered Environmental Product Declaration for its high-carbon ferrochrome, confirmed directly on the official EPD International registry as valid since 13 March 2026. The declaration, based on an independent lifecycle assessment by SGS, verifies the environmental footprint of ferrochrome produced at Kazchrome's Aktobe facilities across the full production cycle — from raw material mining and transportation through to water and energy consumption. SGS's ecology business manager for Kazakhstan and the Caspian subregion, Ilya Korlyakov, has said holding an EPD is becoming a meaningful competitive advantage as carbon requirements tighten in international markets. Kazchrome joins a small but growing list of ferrochrome producers with registered EPDs. Finland's Outokumpu was the first in the industry, publishing its declaration in July 2023, explicitly citing the EU's Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism as the driver behind growing demand for verified low-carbon material. The EPD International registry also lists a Turkish ferrochrome declaration, registered through EPD Türkiye and valid since March 2026, alongside at least one other registered ferrochrome entry. With CBAM's transitional phase now well underway, EPDs are increasingly functioning as a practical requirement for import documentation into European markets rather than a purely voluntary sustainability signal.

South Africa's ferrochrome industry is still working through the recovery that began on 16 February 2026, when the Glencore-Merafe Chrome Venture's Lion Smelter in Steelpoort, Limpopo, achieved its first ferrochrome production tap after recommissioning 50% of its operating capacity. Six months on, that restart stands as the clear origin point of a recovery trajectory now visible across both Venture partners' own subsequent disclosures — even as the industry's underlying tariff economics remain only partially resolved. Lion's restart followed the National Energy Regulator of South Africa's approval of a 12-month interim electricity tariff of 87.74c/kWh, a steep cut from the roughly R2/kWh smelters had been paying, though the Venture said at the time that even this rate would not support Lion, Boshoek or Wonderkop sustainably over the long term — all three, it said, needed a tariff of 62c/kWh to be commercially viable. That gap defined the following months: NERSA approved the 62c/kWh tariff at the end of May, and the Section 189 retrenchment process affecting the smelters was formally withdrawn in June. At the time of Lion's restart, South Africa's ferrochrome sector had just 11 of its 66 furnaces operating nationally, against roughly 4.8 million tonnes of installed annual capacity — a level of distress industry voices warned could push output down toward 1 million tonnes in 2026 without tariff relief. The Venture's own subsequent reporting confirms Lion's tap as the start of a real, if gradual, recovery rather than a one-off event. Glencore's H1 2026 production report showed attributable ferrochrome output climbing from effectively nil in Q4 2025 and 13,000 tonnes in Q1 2026 to 97,000 tonnes in Q2 — a trajectory beginning exactly at Lion's February restart, with Glencore explicitly citing Lion's phased restart as the driver. Merafe's own H1 2026 results, released in full on 11 August, corroborate the same pattern from its 20.5% share of the Venture: chrome ore sales rose 75% to 380,000 tonnes and ferrochrome sales held nearly flat despite a 75% production collapse, with the company crediting higher prices and higher volumes sold, alongside continuing restart progress at Boshoek and Wonderkop, for the resulting profit more than doubling to R512 million. Taken together, the two companies' own numbers show that Lion's February tap was the first concrete evidence South Africa's ferrochrome collapse had found a floor, and that the subsequent tariff resolution and smelter restarts through H1 2026 have begun translating into real financial recovery for the Venture — even as the sector's longer-term competitiveness against lower-cost producers elsewhere remains an open question SMM continues to track.