Producer
Yunnan Chihong Zinc & Germanium
Chinese zinc and germanium producer (SHEX: 600497, HQ Kunming, Yunnan); major integrated zinc miner and smelter in China. Also one of the world's largest germanium producers — germanium is a critical semiconductor material used in fiber optic cables, infrared optics, and solar cells. Yunnan Chihong's position in germanium (a byproduct of zinc smelting) means the same Chinese company that makes zinc for alkaline batteries also produces a large fraction of the world's germanium for telecommunications and defense optics.
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Zinc Mining & Smelting
55%Germanium (Critical Mineral Byproduct)
30%Lead & Silver
10%Other Specialty Metals
5%
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Did you know2023
Yunnan Chihong Zinc & Germanium is simultaneously a significant zinc smelter (alkaline battery anodes) and one of the world's largest producers of germanium — a critical semiconductor material used in fiber optic cables, infrared thermal imaging systems, and high-efficiency solar cells. Germanium is a trace byproduct of zinc smelting: it concentrates in zinc sulfide ores and is recovered during smelting. China controls approximately 80% of global germanium production (primarily from Yunnan Province), and China applied export licensing restrictions to germanium in August 2023 as a retaliation measure against U.S. semiconductor export controls. The same Yunnan smelter that makes zinc for AA batteries is a primary source of the germanium in fiber optic cables and military thermal imaging.
USGS ↗Origin2023
Yunnan Chihong was founded in Huize County, Yunnan Province -- one of China's most historically significant mining regions, where zinc, lead, and silver mining dates to the Han Dynasty (206 BCE-220 CE). Huize's Tianbaoshan zinc-lead-silver deposit is one of the largest known polymetallic ore bodies in Asia. Yunnan Province sits in the Tethys-Himalayan metallogenic belt, a geological zone that extends from the Eastern Mediterranean to Southeast Asia and contains some of the world's highest-concentration polymetallic deposits. The same geological formation that produces Yunnan's zinc also produces its germanium -- germanium concentrates preferentially in sulfidic zinc ores, and Yunnan Chihong's smelting operations recover germanium as a byproduct of zinc refining. China's August 2023 export licensing restrictions on germanium (imposed as a response to US semiconductor export controls targeting China's chip industry) gave China's Ministry of Commerce authority over export of a mineral that Yunnan Chihong and a few other Chinese smelters produce from zinc operations that predated any semiconductor or fiber optic application for germanium.
Yunnan Chihong Zinc & Germanium Co., Ltd. ↗