Indium eyes upside as LCD demand explodes

Having languished below $500 a kg for the first four months of the year, indium prices jumped more than 60 percent to $700 a kg at the start of June.
Prices have since slipped to about $650 a kg, but are expected to head higher and the chances of the silvery-white metal revisiting records above $1,000, possibly before the end of the year, are now much higher. Behind the rise are accelerating demand from the electronics industry for liquid crystal display and flat screens, stagnant supplies, the threat of strategic stockpiling in China and investment demand.

Electronics applications are said to account for about 80 percent of demand and growing fast is the use of indium in the production of solar panels, which if sustained, would boost consumption significantly.
Simon Gardner-Bond, an analyst at Ocean Equities said the trend towards solar energy will not be slowed by weak global economic growth. “The more affluent consumers will still have the means to buy solar panels.”
“You can quite confidently say indium supply is constrained, physically it cannot be ramped up,” he said.
“There really isn’t the capacity to produce enough indium, as it is a byproduct of zinc mining. Even a large increase in the indium price is not justification enough for most producers to ramp up zinc output just to produce more indium.”

Guardian