Asia kaolin market dominated by China

摘要

Asia is now the leading regional kaolin producer in the world accounting for 28% of output in 2011 compared to 23% in 2007 as shown in Table 1. The main changes from 2007 to 2011 are a reduction in production from the US and UK and a re-assessment of Chinese output. Bob Virta (US Geological Survey Commodity Report for Clays) shows that kaolin output from the US fell from 7.11m tonnes in 2007 to 5.77m tonnes in 2011 with exports decreasing from 3.30m tonnes in 2007 to 2.49m tonnes in 2011.