US to re-smelt its tin strategic stockpile
The US Department of Defense is seeking information on potential stockpiling of critical minerals, while also indicating interest in re-smelting its tin stockpile.
The DoD issued notices seeking information for lithium, nickel, chromium, tellurium, and tin about potential vendors, usual product specifications, relevant regulations, and market conditions. In the specific case of tin, the US already holds a Cold War-era strategic stockpile.
The tin stockpile held by the US Defense Logistics Agency (DLA) once totalled more than 200,000 tonnes. It was accumulated between 1939 and the 1990s, with metal largely smelted from Bolivian tin concentrates at the Longhorn tin smelter in Texas City. The stockpile has since declined significantly following releases over the past three decades.
Over this period, many of the stockpiled ingots have deteriorated due to tin pest, a form of degradation that causes physical breakdown and the loss of up to 20% of tin mass as dust. As a result, much of the material is largely unusable in its current form and poses a contamination risk to other tin products stored nearby.
The DLA wants to reprocess 1,978 tonnes of the remaining stockpiled tin to LME grade (99.85% Sn) ingots for re-addition to the National Defense Stockpile.
This development comes after the White House announced its intentions to reduce US reliance on imported critical minerals through the Project Vault initiative.
The US is approximately 75% reliant on imports to meet its domestic tin consumption as the largest ex-China tin user globally.
The reprocessing of the DLA stockpile is unsurprising due to the known presence of tin pest, and it is likely that the agency will seek to reprocess more of the stockpile in future as a part of the Project Vault initiative.
With critical minerals becoming an increasing focus for the White House, the US government is likely to maintain support for domestic tin supply, as reflected in its backing of leading secondary tin producer Nathan Trotter.
