Indium may be one of the mining industry's lesser known metals - one too obscure for many casual observers of commodity prices to follow. But recent developments have begun to change that. Indium's price has more than tripled in recent years, reaching highs of over $750 per kilogram. With demand rising sharply and uncertainty about new sources of supply, it seems there just isn't enough indium to go around.
Indium is a critical ingredient in a number of high-growth technologies. You may not recognize it, but you may be looking at it right now: indium is a thin-film coating for LCD screens used in high-demand consumer goods like flat panel computer monitors, TVs and cell phones. It is also a key component in new generation thin-film solar cells - part of the fast-growing global alternative energy market, projected to quadruple to more than US$226 billion a year by 2016.1 Then there are indium's additional uses: in solders, semi-conductors, infrared devices and other applications.
Chemically similar to aluminum, indium is soft, malleable and easily fusible, qualities that account for its excellent performance as a coating. And when combined with other substances to form materials like indium nitride, it is an extremely efficient full-spectrum collector of solar energy. Indium occurs in nature alongside base metals such as tin, copper, lead and zinc, and is recovered as a byproduct of the smelting process. It is also a rare element, ranked 61st in abundance in the earth's crust.
It is this rarity, especially in economic concentrations coupled with growing demand, which accounts for indium's explosive price increases in recent years. This is also the underpinning of the projections of industry watchers who suggest that we may in the early stages of an indium bull market - that indium might be the next hot metal. If these predictions turn out to be accurate, companies that can supply indium to help satisfy global needs are strongly positioned for success.
Enter Adex Mining Inc. (TSX-V: ADE) and its recently reactivated Mount Pleasant Mine property, which has been called the world's largest reserve of indium by Natural Resources Canada.2 Mount Pleasant reports a 43-101 non-compliant historical tin-indium total resource of 3,645,429 tonnes with 107 parts per million of indium, according to a 1997 feasibility study completed by Kvaerner Metals Davy Ltd.
Adex is currently working to expand on and upgrade these reserve estimates and to study other areas of mineralization on the Mount Pleasant property, with drilling scheduled to commence by March of 2008. This work will pave the way for the preparation of a new feasibility study for Mount Pleasant, which, if favourable, would help to lay the groundwork to reactivate mining at the property.
Adex officials say they are excited about the future of the Mount Pleasant property - small wonder, given the strong demand for and rapid price appreciation of indium, this once-obscure metal, now recognized as an essential component of flat screen and solar energy technologies.
1. Clean Edge: The Clean-tech Market Authority. "Clean-Energy Trends 2007 Report." March, 2007.
2. Wright, Phillip. "Mineral and Metal commodity Review: Tin." Natural Resources Canada, 1996.
