Rio Tinto Minerals (RTM), also known in its
borates capacity as US Borax Inc., has a global footprint with
a tier one borate mine at Boron, California, US. The mine
has expansion optionality and RTM also manages identified
additional resources in the state, together with a further
project in Serbia.
|
|
Close up of Jadarite ore, a
source of lithium and
borates, from Rio Tinto Minerals’
exploration project
in Serbia (source: Rio Tinto
Minerals).
|
Denver, US-headquartered RTM has 140 years of
experience in finding, mining, refining, supplying and
marketing borate products. Currently, RTM supplies over 30
products to customers in over 100 countries, roughly equating
to a 30% share of global sales of refined products. The company
has produced under the 20 Mule Team Borax brand for more than
100 years.
RTM operates processing plants and shipping
facilities in the US, China, Malaysia, France, Spain and the
Netherlands, and has a global network of warehouses and stock
points to service its worldwide supply obligations, managed
locally by regional headquarters in Spain and Singapore.
The company’s estimate of its
available resources is considered to be sufficient to operate
the business at increasing levels of production for over 40
years. Detailed studies are currently underway on the Jadarite
deposit in Serbia, which is prospective for lithium as well as
borates.
RTM continues to invest strongly in its borate
business, and in 2014 the company commissioned a new processing
facility at Boron in California, called the Modified Direct
Dissolving of Kernite (MMDK) plant, with the purpose of better
utilising the range of ore types at the deposit and extending
the mine life. Now fully operational, MMDK is also capable of
processing a wider variety of ore types.
Demand for borates over time is expected to remain strong
and is forecast to increase during the latter stages of global
economic development, beginning in the second half of the
present decade (see Figure 1). As economies
develop and per capita gross domestic product (GDP) increases,
there will be more demand for products containing boron.
|
Figure 1: Minerals and metals
demand vs global GDP
|
|
|
Source: Rio Tinto
Minerals
|
Borates demand
The fundamental drivers of the global borate
industry are underpinned by a growing global economy.
China is the biggest consumer of borates and demand is growing
at a rate faster than the overall borate industry, albeit close
to its own GDP growth rate, which is currently around 7%. The
US is the second largest borate-consuming country; demand there
is forecast to grow at a rate higher than GDP, primarily driven
by continued recovery in the housing market.
RTM estimates that over time, significant demand
growth will come from three strategic market pillars:
urbanisation, energy and global food supply.
As urbanisation takes place, the size of the middle class
also tends to grow, and as populations age, demand builds for
fundamental items used in buildings such as glazed ceramics,
liquid crystal display (LCD) televisions and electronic
devices, appliances that contain borosilicate glass (BSG) and
textile fiberglass
(TFG). Urbanisation
China is a prime example of where structural
changes in the economy are having far-reaching effects on the
demand for raw materials, including borates. Though investment
is likely to remain a primary driver of growth in the country,
its influence will diminish as consumption plays a
progressively more important role.
|
Demand by end use: Refined
borates
|
|
|
Source: Rio Tinto
Minerals
|
Energy
Under the energy pillar, there is growing demand
for borates used in energy-saving applications, including
insulation for homes and buildings, as well as in energy
creation from oil extraction to wind power.
In North America, the recovery in US house
building, a reduction in the unemployment rate and an increase
in consumer spending are boosting demand for borates. This is
expected to continue well beyond 2015.
In addition, there is growing potential for
increased demand for fibre glass to be used as building
insulation material in China, as the country further encourages
green building practices for energy saving purposes.
Global food supply
The global food supply market pillar refers to
agriculture and the need to increase crop yields and quality
through better soil and plant nutrition, against a backdrop of
a reduction in arable land and a growing global population.
Significant boron deficiencies in soils are
acknowledged globally, and the mineral is increasingly being
recognised as a critical element for improving crop yields and
product quality. India is one of a large number of countries
where the use of micronutrients is being supported by
government projects and subsidies to increase crop
productivity.
RTM estimates global demand for borates will grow at a
compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of almost 5% over the next
five-year period. Demand for the major refined products, sodium
pentaborate (5mol) and boric acid (BA), will be driven
primarily by the growth for BSG, frits for ceramic glazes,
insulation and agriculture.
Technology to drive consumption
Other notable borate end-uses include TFG and
LCD. Rapid and accelerating LCD innovation will likely create
new demand and shortened replacement cycles for a wide range of
glass products and devices.
|
Figure 3: Global 5mol demand by
end use (2014)
|
 |
|
Source: Industry and Rio
Tinto Minerals estimates
|
The top four end uses for sodium pentaborate
products by volume and growth potential are BSG, insulation,
chemicals (including feedstock for other chemical production)
and agriculture. These four groupings account for 80% of
global sodium pentaborate demand.
Boric acid demand is more diversified in nature;
the top three end uses account for about 50% of the total.
Similar to sodium pentaborate, BSG is a key end use, with frit
and thin film transistor (TFT)/LCD for televisions and
electronics featuring among the other primary end uses.
RTM considers information available in trade
statistics, suppliers’ published production
capacities and publicly announced expansion details to generate
a global view of supply for both sodium pentaborate and boric
acid.
The company estimates that, over the period from
2014 to 2019, the supply of the major refined products will
increase by approximately 10%, or 300,000 tonnes, when
converted into boric oxide equivalent units. The majority of
this supply increase is for sodium pentaborate.
The outlook for demand for sodium pentaborate and
its derivatives is good over the next five years and the
capacity increases that are being brought online will be needed
to meet the demand profile.
RTM forecasts that the increased supply from 2014
to 2019 will be absorbed over this time period, particularly in
the US housing industry and in other sectors such as
China’s BSG industry.
It expects that boric acid supply will increase
marginally with anticipated debottlenecking of current
processes and a relatively small supply addition in South
America. Existing boric acid capacity is likely to be adequate
to meet the demand projections through 2019, as utilisation
rates appear to have room to increase.
Over time, RTM has continued to make investments
in research and development (R&D) to drive innovation. The
company has built and operates R&D Technology Centres in
the US and more recently in China. These centres play an
important role in supporting existing customers and developing
current markets, new products and new end uses.
Good product stewardship across the borate
industry is a key priority and is required to ensure borate
products can continue to be used and sold throughout global
markets. RTM’s product stewardship experts have
been called on by regulatory authorities to provide expert
opinion and testimony on borate science and toxicology and RTM
currently holds the presidency of the world’s only
borate industry association, based in Europe.
|
Figure 4: Global BA demand by end
use (2014)
|
 |
| Source: Industry and Rio Tinto
Minerals estimates |
Besides supporting industry, RTM actively works
with regulatory authorities globally to support the development
of sound policies that impact the industry, and to promote and
protect borate markets and products. It also has product
stewardship representatives located in strategic markets to
work with customers and authorities.
It is RTM’s belief that three
strategic market pillars of urbanisation, energy and global
food supply needs, discussed above, will continue to fuel the
need for borates for the foreseeable future.
Although China’s GDP growth is
slowing, Chinese demand for borates remains robust. The US is
back on the path of growth and Europe is stabilising –
the latest developments in the Greek debt crisis
notwithstanding – meaning that the trends outlined
will have a solid economic base to develop from.
*Forward-Looking Statements: This
paper includes forward-looking statements. Such forward-looking
statements involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and
other factors which may cause the actual results, performance
or achievements of Rio Tinto, or industry results, to be
materially different from any future results, performance or
achievements expressed or implied by such forward-looking
statements. Nothing in this paper should be interpreted to mean
that future earnings per share of Rio Tinto Plc or Rio Tinto
Ltd will necessarily match or exceed its historical published
earnings per share.
Boron in wind turbines
Boron is used to make neodymium-iron-boron
(NdFeB) magnets, a type of high-strength permanent magnet used
in modern wind turbines.
The three metals are combined to form the alloy
Nd2Fe14B, which has a tetragonal
crystalline structure.
By integrating this magnetic material into the
turbine’s generator system (in so-called permanent
magnet generator, or PMG, systems), the turbine is given much
greater overall mechanical reliability and generation
efficiencies compared to the old gearbox designs which provided
the mechanics for earlier wind turbine models. This in turn
leads to reduce maintenance costs and downtime.
A generator moves magnetic fields past wire coils
or vice versa, which makes electrons move in the wire. The goal
is to move lots of magnetism past lots of wire to move lots of
electrons.
PM alternators can be configured in a variety of
ways, with coils spinning around magnets, magnets spinning
around coils (most common), or in "axial" designs, where the
magnets and coils face each other in a disk-like arrangement
and the magnets typically spin.
The use of NdFeb magnets in wind turbines has
increased significantly since the late 2000s and this trend
looks likely to continue as global climate change targets put
more pressure on governments to source an increasing proportion
of their national energy consumption from renewables.
Sources: Borates Bulletin, Terra Magnetica, Home
Power