South Korea is one of the world’s leading ingot producers

The South Korean zinc company is the world’s largest ingot producer, while South Korea does not have rich zinc reserves and imports most of its concentrate through imports. This makes South Korea the second largest importer of zinc concentrate after China, which in 2016 imported 1.9 million tons of zinc concentrate, which was equivalent to 17.5% of interstate trade worldwide. South Korea’s huge activity in the production of refined zinc ingots made South Korea the largest exporter of zinc ingots in the world in 2016; The country exported 572,000 tons of refined zinc ingots this year, accounting for 10.5 percent of world trade. It is worth mentioning that in addition to this volume of exports, more than 55% of the zinc ingots produced in South Korea are also consumed in this country. Most of this metal is used to produce galvanized sheets used in car bodies. Nyerstar was the second largest producer of refined zinc in the world, producing about one million refined zinc in 2016. In addition to producing zinc ingots, the company also operates mines, but in recent years, the production of zinc concentrate has decreased and a large volume of raw materials for the production of zinc ingots from other mining producers. Glencore was the third largest producer of zinc ingots in 2016, producing about one million tons of zinc ingots. Therefore, it can be said that about 15% of the world’s zinc production belonged to this company. Glencore Company is also one of the largest mineral producers in the world. However, production at the company in 2016 fell by about 24%. The Brazilian company Turantim was the world’s fifth largest producer of refined zinc and the largest producer of zinc metal in South America, accounting for about 4.5 percent of the world’s refined zinc metal in 2016. The company procures concentrates from the mines of Peru and Brazil. India Zinc Company, which is the largest producer of lead and zinc in India, in 2016 with a production of about 600 thousand tons of zinc metal was ranked fourth in the production of this metal. Boliden Company was also the sixth largest producer of zinc ingots with 2 melting units. The company also ranked fifth in the world in 2016 for concentrate production.