Large-scale tin mining began in the 19th century after industrialisation, especially in the early 20th century, with the continuous development of the tin industry. Tin has gradually become an indispensable key rare metal for modern industry, mainly used in the production of tinplate, electroplating, corrosion science, welding, materials, tin chemical products and other metallurgical uses of tin, and is widely used in electronics, information, electrical appliances, chemicals, metallurgy, building materials, machinery, food packaging, aerospace, shipping, fuel, atomic energy and spacecraft and other cutting-edge technology fields. It is called the 'industrial monosodium glutamate'. Judging from the current analysis of the world's tin production and sales structure, with the continuous development of the world economy, the demand for tin in the international market continues to grow. However, the global mining industry has limited new production capacity, and Indonesia, the world's largest exporter of tin ingots and concentrates, has restricted the export of tin ingots with a purity of less than 99.9% since 1 July 2013. As a result, the supply of tin in the international market is currently in short supply.
In the medium and long term, the growth of tin demand is inseparable from the continued rapid development of the electronics industry and the development of other emerging industries that require tin, such as electronic solder in the semiconductor industry, tin solder in the photovoltaic industry, and zinc hydroxystannate in PVC flame retardants. Although some traditional industries will gradually replace tin with other materials in their use of materials, such as replacing tin with aluminium in food packaging and replacing tin alloys with other alloys, the overall demand for tin will continue to grow, and the shortage of tin metal supply will remain for a long time. As tin resources continue to be depleted, the recycled tin industry will gradually become an important source of supply in the international tin market. At present, tin production technology is relatively developed in China and Peru, tin handicrafts from Malaysia and Thailand are world-renowned, and developed countries such as Europe, America and Japan have obvious advantages in deep processing of tin products. This has formed a world tin industry structure dominated by developing countries producing raw materials and developed countries processing them further.
