July/August 2005

China dominates as co-operative research is highlighted at Plansee seminar

With fast-rising tungsten prices, the topic that delegates talked over most at the Plansee hardmetals seminar was the world's largest producer, China. Ken Brookes went to Austria for the event...

Once again the Plansee Seminar, organised by Plansee Holdings AG in the tranquil surroundings of Austria's Tyrol, proved itself the can't-miss conference for all those with interests in refractory metals and hard materials. It is hard to say that it exceeded expectations, since expectations for the 16th Plansee Seminar were understandably high, but few indeed could have been disappointed.

An aerial view of the Plansee plant near Reutte in Austria near where the seminar is held.

With a four-year gap between meetings, the Seminar has many unique attributes. It is especially unusual in that it is organised as much for the sponsoring company's competitors as for its
customers and the academic world. Its main venue is the Walter Schwarzkopf Haus adjacent to, but separated from, the technology-rich headquarters of the Plansee enterprise, famed for its expertise with high-temperature powder metallurgy and now also one of the homes of Ceratizit. These works are located just outside the large Tyrolean village - or small town - of Reutte, close to the Plansee, the lake from which the company takes its name. In the neighbourhood are a number of smaller villages, each with a modest number of small or medium-sized hotels, which the Seminar fills to capacity. A squadron of buses rounds up the participants each morning and redistributes them each night.

Michael Schwarzkopf

A remarkable feature of the Seminar is that posters are given equal standing with oral presentations. The seminar building has just one large hall and, apart from a few plenary papers of special distinction, hard materials and refractory metals take turn and turn about in oral presentations. When hard materials monopolise the hall, refractory metals posters are actively displayed, and vice versa. A corollary, of course, is that someone (a journalist, perhaps) wishing to hear or see all the hardmetals papers will have little time available for equally interesting papers on refractory metals, apart from those aspects dealt with in plenary session.
For the first time ever, there was no simultaneous translation service, with a solitary language (English) for all purposes. Early Plansee seminars pioneered simultaneous translation, with a row of interpreters' booths down one side of the conference hall, transmitting by infra-red to portable, switchable receivers. I well recall one memorable occasion when a translator, having listened silently to five minutes of fluent technical German, asked plaintively if the speaker could be prevailed upon to "insert a verb."
Addressing the 552 participants from 34 countries, Michael Schwarzkopf, company chairman and grandson of Plansee founder Paul Schwarzkopf, emphasised the co-operative nature of current research. Of the 231 oral and poster contributions, more than 90 per cent were the result of interactions, of which 26 per cent were designated industry/industry, 36 per cent university/university and 29 per cent university/industry. Only 4 per cent came from a university with no external co-operation, and just 5 per cent from a single industrial company. Though only a minority of authors were physically present, the papers listed no less than 911 of these important individuals. But of actual participants, roughly two-thirds were from industry and one-third from universities and research institutions.
It was no surprise to find that the Plansee Seminar schedule was crowded with new products, technological breakthroughs and the kind of research that cuts through international, interdisciplinary and intellectual barriers. But there is always one topic that seems to be on everyone's lips, and in 2005 that topic was the PRC - The People's Republic of China.
China is often referred to as a "sleeping giant," a "sleeping dragon" or even a "sleeping tiger." But to take a real mouthful of metaphors, as far as the tungsten industry - and especially the hardmetals industry - is concerned, the giant is wide awake, the dragon is flexing its wings and breathing fire, and the tiger is sharpening its claws.

Though it contributed fewer delegates than Austria, Germany or the United States, for the first time the People's Republic of China sent more than Japan, and fielded by far the largest number of authors. Moreover, the keynote presentation in the first hardmetals session was a survey of the Chinese industry by Professor Guo of Beijing University.
Speculation was rife among delegates as to the likely effects of recent massive hikes in tungsten prices, which are largely set by Chinese producers. China is trying hard to be a major producer and exporter of sintered hardmetals, rather than the raw materials or intermediates of the past, with two of the world's four top (by tonnage) producers in Chinese ownership, and others from the West, like Sandvik and Kennametal, racing to establish, extend or promote their Chinese-located plants. The EU's REACH chemicals legislation, which could have a devastating effect on European producers' economics, if not actual production, reinforces manufacturers’ desire to establish alternative facilities well away from Brussels bureaucrats. REACH and its disruptive potential was an aspect of business in Europe heavily criticised by Dr Schwarzkopf in his opening address (See Metal Powder Report, June 2005).

China’s rapidly expanding hardmetals production capacity and supply dominance has focused the attention of hardmetals specialists in other parts of the world.

Launching the first hard materials session, Professor Shiju Guo provided a fascinating, fact-filled overview of the Chinese industry, entitled Hardmetals in China. A little disappointingly, his statistics only covered the period up to 2003, but trends could clearly be seen.
China is by far the world's largest producer of tungsten, of which more than half goes into hardmetals. With its fast-expanding industrial base, the country is both the largest producer and consumer of sintered carbides, with an astonishing 160 hardmetal manufacturers in 21 provinces. In 2003 they produced around 13,200 tonnes, 76 per cent up on the 7500 tonnes of 1998, though even in 2003 a mere 2500 tonnes were exported. Table 1 gives statistics for the eight provinces that can each produce more than 1000 tonnes of cemented carbides annually.

Hardmetals and tungsten steels take more than 80 per cent of China’s tungsten production.

Between them, these many manufacturers offer a choice of 320 hardmetal grades and more than 40,000 standard shapes and sizes.
In Professor Guo's opinion, the industry's expansion was over-enthusiastic, only 59 per cent of capacity having been used in 2003. The total of "final-machined" (finish-ground?) hardmetal was also low, at 1038.6 tonnes, about 10 per cent of production, but 9 per cent up on the previous year.
With low labour costs compared with the West, insert tooling has taken much longer to gain a hold in Chinese industry. Market research showed that 27 per cent of tungsten carbides, some 3300 tonnes, went into cutting tools; 2550 tonnes in brazed tools but only 750 tonnes in replaceable inserts.
Around 25 per cent - about 3000 tonnes - was used in mining, 35 per cent or 4200 tonnes in wear parts, and the remaining 13 per cent, around 1500 tonnes, for mixed powders, steel-bonded carbides and so-called cermets. Simple WC/Co carbide grades made up 69 per cent of total production.
The author highlighted the price differential between imported and indigenous hardmetal products. Most imported carbide was in the form of precision inserts for automated metalcutting machines. Although imports took only 1.5 per cent of the market by volume, they comprised 12.5 per cent by value. He also contrasted the joint sales value and profitability of 44 companies (presumably the largest or most efficient) in the Chinese industry with those of Sandvik and Kennametal (Table 2).

State-sponsored research

Professor Guo of Beijing University.

The professor saw an urgent need for transition from low-quality to high-grade products, to meet new challenges. Cut-throat competition was rife, with little regard to the reasonable utilisation of resources or to environmental protection.

Though not to the extent I saw in Moscow during the pre-glasnost years of the early 1980s, somewhat old-style production facilities are counterbalanced by ingenious and well-funded research in universities and state institutions. Professor Guo listed some of these national projects involving hardmetals:
• Ultrafine or nanometre WC powders and alloys;
• Gradient cemented carbides;
• Coated cemented carbide - PVD, CVD, MT-CVD, Plasma CVD;
• Diamond film, TiAlN, AlCrN; and
• Precise machining of large and complex products.
Many of these topics formed the basis of contributions elsewhere in the Seminar, but a few pointers are of interest here. Since China is the world's largest producer of rare-earth oxides, strenuous efforts are being made to show that they are effective and efficient grain-growth inhibitors. However, the argument is not helped by claims that vanadium carbide and chromium carbide are inefficient, giving poor densification, which to my mind indicates a lack of knowledge on how best to utilise these long-established additives.
Microwave sintering has yielded some interesting results, as has the research on gradient sintering of low-carbon, WC/8Co grades laden with eta phase, though the low hardness values obtained with the latter militate against any large-scale commercial application.
To summarise, China seems to be where the 2005 hardmetal industry is happening, not only as the primary source of raw materials, with control of its pricing structure, but also as the location of at least half the carbide sinterers in the world and a substantial part of both production and consumption. That dragon is more likely to have a family than to go back to sleep again.