Japan Indium Import Decreases along ITO Plant Down in March

Japanese indium import decreased by 9% to 31 tonnes in March from a year earlier, according to the trade statistics by Ministry of Finance. The import volume also decreased from the February. Indium import seems to have decreased since JX Nippon Mining & Metals’ Isohara plant was damaged by Japan Earthquake. Isohara plant is the world’s largest operation of ITO (indium-tin-oxide) sputtering target material.

Japanese rare earths import also decreased by 18% to 355 tonnes year-on-year in March. Japanese users are suffered from harder material procurement such for metallic neodymium evolved from Chinese government’s export regulation policy covering rare metals.

Meanwhile, primary aluminium import increased by 20% to 161,242 tonnes in March from a year earlier and hit the highest volume since June 2010. Copper scrap import increased by 24% to 6,552 tonnes while the import was lower than 10,000-tonne level in October 2010 when domestic scrap generation was severely low.