Polysilicon Prices Still Have the Risk of Falling

South Africa's Department of Mineral and Petroleum Resources has instructed Samancor to stop depositing tailings at any of its dams at the Dikwena Chrome facility in Brits, North West, while an investigation continues into the August 13 collapse of a sidewall at the mine's Dam 1B tailings storage facility. The failure released the bulk of the dam's stored waste, damaging mine infrastructure, a railway line and Eskom power infrastructure, and sending sludge into a nearby wetland and toward the neighboring Eland Mine's Maroelabult shaft area. No injuries or fatalities were reported. Minister Gwede Mantashe, accompanied by Deputy Minister Phumzile Mgcina, Water and Sanitation Deputy Minister David Mahlobo and chief inspector of mines David Msiza, conducted a joint on-site and aerial oversight visit to the facility on August 17. Mantashe said the incident underscored that tailings dam management is a mining issue tied directly to operational and structural accountability rather than a water-management matter alone, and raised concern that Samancor had not decisively addressed seepage reportedly identified at the facility roughly three months before the collapse. Samancor has taken responsibility for the investigation, clean-up and rehabilitation, with CEO Desmond McManus confirming the company is repairing damaged electrical infrastructure and access roads and will appoint an independent professional to assess the facility. The Department of Water and Sanitation has deployed teams to conduct water quality sampling and environmental risk assessments, while Mahlobo said an aerial inspection indicated the spillage had been contained, though the facility's exact groundwater impact remains under review. The tailings facility is operated by contractor One Chrome, which also runs the site's Inyoni Platinum PGM recovery plant, and investigations into the technical and operational causes of the failure remain ongoing.

South Africa's ferroalloys sector remains in a state of rapid decline despite recent electricity pricing relief for the ferrochrome industry, according to Ferro-Alloy Producers Association (FAPA) chairperson Nellis Bester. He said the tariff relief, credited with enabling the restart of Glencore Merafe's Boshoek and Wonderkop smelters earlier this year, has served mainly to prevent further deterioration rather than restore conditions for renewed growth, and should be treated as a short-term measure rather than a lasting fix. Bester attributed the sector's ongoing weakness to a combination of structural pressures: escalating electricity costs, rail and port logistics constraints, unprotected imports of finished alloy products, growing competition from lower-cost producing countries, and prolonged uncertainty over industrial policy. He said South Africa's silicon and manganese alloy operations are in a more precarious position than ferrochrome, with several smelters already suspended and others at risk of permanent closure, and warned that without decisive government and Eskom intervention within weeks, the decline would deepen and add to unemployment. Among the fixes Bester called for are a genuinely competitive electricity tariff, import duties on finished alloy goods, and improved rail and port infrastructure to reduce reliance on costlier road transport for exports. He stressed that South Africa retains world-class mineral resources, technical expertise and installed smelting capacity, but that these advantages are being eroded by structural cost disadvantages the industry says can still be corrected through coordinated action, adding that producers are not seeking permanent protection, only a fair, competitive operating environment to preserve the sector's remaining skilled jobs.

Since August, constrained by multiple factors including industry-wide losses, diverging production costs, and the off-season demand lull, China's national manganese silicon output has exhibited a pattern of "intensifying regional divergence and an overall dip-then-rise trajectory." Looking at the actual production dynamics across major producing regions, manufacturers have adopted differentiated scheduling strategies based on their own cost structures, order books, and policy expectations.