[Ferro-alloys.com] The number of Asian steel mills and capacity of crude steel took the leading place in the world. China, Japan, South Korea and India were the major clusters of steel mills in Asia. China, Russia, Brazil and Norway were the major sources of ferrosilicon for Japan and South Korea. Having reserves of manganese ores, India boasted quite many siliconmanganese and ferromanganese producers, but the number of ferrosilicon producers was tiny. India mainly imported ferrosilicon from Bhutan and we would make a brief introduction of Bhutan ferrosilicon industry.

Compared with China, Bhutan was quite small in capacity of ferrosilicon, but Bhutan was still ranked among top three producers of ferrosilicon in Asia. The first ferrosilicon furnace of 28.5 MVA dated back to October 1994 and the plant was operated in 1995, another furnace of 18 MVA was constructed in December 2006, which enabled the annual capacity to 35 thousand tons.

Between 2008 and 2009, more ferrosilicon projects were launched in Bhutan, with furnaces being 21 MVA. Editor of www.ferro-alloys.com learnt there were five ferrosilicon producers in Bhutan and the total annual capacity was around 100 thousand tons. Bhutan was the top supplier of ferrosilicon for India, with average 70-75 thousand ferrosilicon (Si＞55%) from Bhutan over the last three years, during when India totally imported 120-150 thousand tons of ferrosilicon each year and this indicated Bhutan ferrosilicon accounted for over half of the total.

• [Editor:Phillip.Feng]