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The new crown pneumonia epidemic in 2020 has caused a complete setback of the global economy. After achieving good results in the fight against the epidemic, China has become the only growth driver of the global economy, and has driven the development of the global metal mining industry with more than half of the world's metal consumption, and has achieved a pattern of gradual strengthening of the metal mining market in the second half of the year.

In 2021, under the good expectations of global economic recovery, effective control of the epidemic, and successful vaccine development, it is expected that the overall operation of the metal mining industry will recover from 2020, and the overall performance of ferrous metals will still be stronger than non-ferrous metals.

Under the strong stimulus of the ultra-high output of crude steel in China, iron ore has become the "star" variety of metal minerals, with an annual increase of more than 110%. Nickel metal has also shown an excellent market driven by China's stainless steel industry. The manganese and chromium markets are relatively sluggish due to the oversupply on the supply side. Compared with the two, manganese prices are better than the annual low level of chromium prices due to the temporary blockade of South Africa in April 2020.

As of the end of November 2020, China's metal mining industry has achieved a total profit of 396.03 billion yuan, and the industry's average profit rate is only 3.3%. Among them, the ferrous metal industry realized a profit of 244.73 billion yuan, with an average profit rate of 3.6%. The non-ferrous metal industry achieved a profit of 151.3 billion yuan, with an average profit rate of 2.9%. In the same period, the average profit of industrial enterprises above designated size in my country was 6.1%. Restricted by the high dependence of production materials on external sources, the lack of market pricing power and discourse power resulted in weak profitability and low profit levels in the entire industry. The steel industry performed most prominently.

In 2021, China's crude steel production may still maintain a level of more than 1 billion tons, but steel prices will be reduced due to the weakening of downstream acceptance. Manganese and chromium are likely to continue to hover at low prices, while nickel metal continues to be strong due to stable demand for stainless steel and battery materials.