Rio Tinto extracts first gallium under collaboration with Indium
The development comes amid restrictions from China on exports of metals such as gallium, germanium and antimony to the United States as part of Beijing's retaliation to Washington's trade war. Rio Tinto said the first extraction was performed at Indium's R&D facility in New York, with the next phase looking to assess techniques that can enable production of higher quantities of gallium at a pilot-scale. If the miner succeeds in taking production to commercial scale at its refinery in Quebec, Canada, Rio Tinto is predicting output of up to 40 tonnes annually, worth about 5%-10% of the current global production.