World of Metallurgy ERZMETALL 68 2015 No 3 175 Takashi Yoshida The Advance of Zinc Industry in Japan The History and the Future from the Point of View USD 200 per ton The current price of coke is thought to be at a relatively stable level in which ISP can maintain profitable operations 4 3 Fluctuation of the LME Zinc Price The price of zinc has a large and direct effect on the zinc smelting industry Figure 5 shows changes in the LME and Japanese domestic zinc prices In this figure the LME price was quoted in British pounds GBP t until 1987 and has since been quoted in USD t The LME price has fluctuated a great deal because of several reasons Supply and demand basically influence the situation but in many cases prices go up and down due to money market speculation related to an inflow of speculative fund money From the 1970s the domestic price of zinc gradually increased along with LME price increases but it decreased sharply in 1978 due to the strong yen The domestic price then increased again due to slow increases in the LME price When a strong yen was induced by the 1985 Plaza Accord a measure taken by the US to relieve economic stagnation caused by its increasing trade deficit the domestic price of zinc dropped dramati cally In 1989 a large amount of speculative funds entered the zinc market sharply increasing the price of zinc In 1997 this increased even further because of the actions of the Chinese From 1998 zinc production in China increased strongly whereas domestic demand within China did not China therefore exported more zinc and the price of zinc decreased slightly However China became a net importer from 2004 and the LME reached a historically high level above USD 4500 in 2007 On the stalling of the global economy in 2008 the LME price plunged below USD 2000 The LME price has since rebounded above this level but the domestic price has remained low due to the strong yen As several of abovementioned factors have shown busi ness environment changes have significant effects on run ning a zinc business in Japan a country with limited land and energy resources Almost every Japanese zinc mine has ceased operations Smelters that have surmounted these crises have only continued operations through the blood sweat and tears of actions such as improving the efficiency of facilities and operations implementing energy conserva tion policies and streamlining the workforce 5 Technical development for each MMS zinc smelter MMS continues today with zinc smelting operations at the Kamioka Hachinohe and Hikoshima Smelters The following sections describe how these smelters survived extremely dire economic conditions of the past and con tinue to operate today 5 1 Hachinohe Smelter The Hachinohe Smelter which uses the ISP opened in 1969 with a production capacity of 54 000 t a They later added a large scale blast furnace to reduce total production costs and the current production capacity is 112 000 t a An advantage of the ISP is that zinc and lead are smelted simultaneously so it is possible to process bulk concen trates which cannot treat by wet process Furthermore valuable metals such as gold and silver can be recovered Disadvantages of this process include the relatively low zinc purity 98 5 produced and the need for subsequent refining process Treatment of the large amount of slag is also an issue In addition fluctuations in the price of coke used as a reducing reagent can impact company profits As mentioned earlier various technological improvements have been implemented at the Hachinohe Smelter to re spond to economic changes and invigorate its competitive ness To reduce energy costs the smelter has promoted the use of low calorific value LCV gas a blast furnace exhaust gas and generated electricity by exhaust heat recovery In addition two slag fuming furnaces are employed to clean slag and recover zinc lead and other metals in the slag Fig 5 Change of zinc price domestic and LME Source Japan Mining In dustry Association LME Japanese k t LME t Domestic Zn price LME ｔ LME ｔ Year k JPY t

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