Impacted by the outbreak of COVID-19, tungsten and rare earth enterprises in Jiangxi suspended production for 15 to 20 days in the first two months, when the revenue of tungsten industry stood at 3.12 billion yuan (440.5 million U.S. dollars), down 15.2 percent year on year, and the rare earth industry at 2.25 billion yuan, down 24.3 percent year on year.
The provincial department of industry and information technology said in March, with supporting policies from the provincial government, all major tungsten and rare earth enterprises have solved labor and logistics problems to resume operation.
It foresaw the revenue of the tungsten industry in the first quarter to reach 5.5 billion yuan, down 6.4 percent year on year, and the rare earth industry to reach 5 billion yuan, down 4.9 percent from the corresponding period of last year.
Jiangxi Tungsten Holding Group Company Ltd., a leading Tungsten supplier, fully resumed production on Feb. 19, with none of 56,000 employees infected with the virus.
China Southern Rare Earth Group, one of the six state-owned rare earth mining groups in China, is expected to post 1.6 billion yuan in revenue in the first quarter, up 43.48 percent year on year, thanks to some long-term orders inked last year.
However, the industrial watchdog warned of uncertainties. As COVID-19 has become a global pandemic, it has affected Chinese rare earth producers' intermediate product import countries, hitting the industrial chain.
The east China province of Jiangxi is the country's largest production base of tungsten and heavy rare earths with 213 major producers.
In 2019, the main business revenues of the tungsten and rare earth firms in Jiangxi reached 30.67 billion yuan and 23.86 billion yuan respectively, both ranking first in the country and accounting for more than 30 percent of the country's total.
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