Ferrite Magnet Price Trend

Ferrite magnet, also referred as ceramic magnet, is a type of cost-effective magnetic material and widely served for various fields in the past several decades, such as loudspeakers, permanent magnet (PM) motors, and magnetic separation equipment. Market share of ferrite magnet is still very large even the application areas of sintered Neodymium magnets are more and more extensive. Most people have been able to understand the apparent association between cost price of rare earth permanent magnets and PrNd, DyFe, Tb, or Co price trend, then they also believe that ferrite magnet price trend is quite stable. Actually, ferrite magnet price trend will also fluctuate with price change of raw material, and particularly during this year.

Strontium Carbonate is a kind of inorganic carbonate which widely used in light industry, chemical industry, national defense, and electronics industry. As the two main raw material of ferrite magnets, Strontium Carbonate and the source of iron oxide are occupying 85 percent and 15 percent of the entire material cost, respectively. Therefore, it is self-evident that the price index of Strontium Carbonate has decisively influence on the ferrite magnet price trend. Strontium Carbonate is basically prepared by Celestite, whose supply has been strained since 2021 due to the combined effect of different reasons. Main producing areas of Celestite in China have been limiting or stopping production resulting from the mine accident and environmental pressure. In the meanwhile, imported ore from Iran, Mexico, and Spain is also impacted by COVID-19.

Ferrite magnets with different levels, formulas, and process technology have its own demands on the raw material of iron oxide. For ferrite magnets, the source of iron oxide includes preprocessed iron scale and ferric oxide prepared by Ruthner process. Iron scale is generally referring to the scaly oxide layers which peeled off from steel during its heating or rolling process. It is necessary to preprocess iron scale to ensure magnetic properties of ferrite magnets and that’s why routine iron scale cannot be selected as the price index. As a conventional inorganic compound, price index of ferric oxide is more convincing to downstream in comparison with preprocessed iron scale. Price trend of iron scale and ferric oxide mainly depends on policy factors of Chinese Government, especially reduce excessive steel production capacity and environmental pressure.