The Tin Industry Association issues a call to action: The irrational rise in tin prices has caused a disruption to the industry supply chain, urging all parties in the market to maintain a rational and cautious attitude.

On December 23, the Tin Branch of China Nonferrous Metals Industry Association and the Electronic Tin-soldering Materials Branch of China Electronic Materials Industry Association jointly issued a proposal stating that the irrational rise in tin prices has already had an impact on the industry supply chain. As an important strategic metal, the market stability of tin has profound significance for many areas of the national economy. Tin is an indispensable basic raw material for key industries such as electronic soldering, new energy, high-end equipment manufacturing, green tin plating, and national defense and military industries. The security of tin supply and stable prices are directly related to the stability and competitiveness of China's industrial chain. In order to better maintain market order, create a stable market environment, it is called on all parties in the market to maintain a rational and cautious attitude, avoid blindly following trends, objectively judge market conditions, increase risk awareness, jointly create a healthy and rational market environment, resist speculative activities that violate market objective laws, and collaboratively guide prices back to a rational range and improve long-term stable market mechanisms. The original text is as follows: Proposal Recently, influenced by various factors such as the extension of the ban on manual ore exports in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the continued M23 conflict, and slow recovery of mining areas in Myanmar, tin prices have repeatedly hit new highs. Since December 2025, the cumulative increase in LME tin prices has reached 11.5%, and SHFE tin prices have risen by over 13%. In just half a month, the price of tin per ton has risen by over 4,000 RMB! Among them, the three-month futures contract price of tin on the London Metal Exchange (LME) and the main contract price of tin on the Shanghai Futures Exchange (SHFE) continue to rise strongly, with the highest prices breaking through $43,900 per ton and 348,000 RMB per ton respectively, both reaching new highs. The rapid rise in tin prices at the current stage has completely deviated from the industrial fundamentals. From the supply side, the supply of major producing countries like the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Myanmar has gradually improved and stabilized, with the monthly export volume of Wa State tin mines steadily increasing to nearly a thousand tons; domestic tin smelting enterprises have fully released their production capacity, with refined tin production from January to November reaching 189,000 tons, a year-on-year increase of 6.2%; LME tin inventories and SHFE tin inventories have not shown any signs of tightness, with the total inventory of the two markets being stable at the level of tens of thousands of tons, overall the industrial operation has remained stable. On the demand side, although the demand in emerging fields such as photovoltaics, automotive electronics, and AI continues to grow this year, demand in traditional fields such as tinplate and chemicals has remained stable, with an estimated nearly 3% increase in global tin consumption in 2025, lower than the production growth rate by about 0.5 percentage points, indicating that overall demand has not shown strong growth. Influenced by the slowdown in overseas demand, the global refined tin supply-demand situation is still in a surplus of about 10,000 tons, and the rapid price increase in this round is more a result of market sentiment and fund driving. At the current stage, the irrational rise in prices has already impacted the industry supply chain. Upstream enterprises may seem to benefit from high prices in the short term, but the violent price fluctuations have also disrupted their production arrangements, inventory control, and long-term investment decisions. For downstream tin-using enterprises such as soldering materials, tinsmiths, and the chemical industry, the sharp rise in costs has brought heavy pressure, with some small and medium-sized enterprises falling into the dilemma of "unable to afford raw materials, afraid to accept orders," making it difficult to fulfill long-term contracts, and the stability of product quality is also challenged. For downstream users in the electronic manufacturing industry, the situation is even more difficult. As the main consumers of tin-based solder materials, facing the rare dilemma of "soaring tin prices", the costs of PCB manufacturing, semiconductor packaging, and other processes have sharply increased, and corporate profits have been severely eroded. Small and medium-sized electronics manufacturers are caught in a dilemma of being squeezed from both ends (the rapid rise in front-end raw material prices and the inability to quickly raise prices for end products), thus their survival space is severely compressed. The rapid rise of tin prices driven by this round of funds has severely magnified market risks, leading to significant harm to the healthy development of global supply chain in various industries. In the long run, the drastic fluctuations in prices also pose a serious threat to the high-quality development of the tin industry. On the one hand, excessively high prices are difficult to sustain, and once the funds recede, prices will plummet, creating a rollercoaster situation that will impact the entire industry chain for the second time. On the other hand, price signals distorted by speculative activities prevent resources from being effectively allocated, diverting business focus from market volatility to technical innovation, process upgrading, and green transformation. The vicious cycle of price surge and crash will ultimately weaken the overall risk resistance of the tin industry, making it difficult to build a safe, stable, and resilient modern industrial system. As an important strategic metal, the market stability of tin has profound significance for many areas of the national economy. As an indispensable basic raw material for key industries such as electronic soldering, new energy, high-end equipment manufacturing, green tin plating, and national defense and military industries, the security of tin supply and stable prices are directly related to the stability and competitiveness of China's industrial chain. In order to better maintain market order and create a stable market environment, the Tin Branch of China Nonferrous Metals Industry Association and the Electronic Tin-soldering Materials Branch of China Electronic Materials Industry Association jointly call on all parties in the market to maintain a rational and cautious attitude, avoid blindly following trends, objectively judge market conditions, increase risk awareness, jointly create a healthy and rational market environment, resist speculative activities that violate market objective laws, collectively guide prices back to a reasonable range, and improve long-term stable market mechanisms! Tin Branch of China Nonferrous Metals Industry Association Electronic Tin-soldering Materials Branch of China Electronic Materials Industry Association December 22, 2025 This article is selected from the WeChat public account "Tin Branch of China Nonferrous Metals Industry Association", GMTEight editor: Xu Wenqiang.