A case study of the availability of platinum group metals for electronics manufacturers

Author

Alonso, Elisa ; Field, Frank R. ; Kirchain, Randolph E.

Author_Institution

Dept. of Mater. Sci. & Eng., Massachusetts Inst. of Technol., Cambridge, MA

fYear

2008

fDate

19-22 May 2008

Firstpage

1

Lastpage

6

Abstract

Platinum group metals, a key material group for electronics manufacturers, exhibit characteristics of a material with high scarcity risk based on Malthusian, Ricardian and structure metrics. This includes high potential future demand growth, high extraction costs and high market concentration of primary supply. The conditions that impact downstream firms are explored through the use of a dynamic material market model. In particular, the average spending over a period of time by downstream firms is proposed as a simple metric to compare the relative impacts of various scenarios on these firms. One scenario comparison showed that recycling could lower average spending as well as reduce price variance.

Keywords

electronics industry; platinum; Malthusian metric; Pt; Ricardian metric; dynamic material market model; electronics manufacturers; high extraction costs; high market concentration; high potential future demand growth; platinum group metals; scarcity risk; structure metrics; Availability; Cobalt; Consumer electronics; Costs; Inorganic materials; Manufacturing; Materials science and technology; Platinum; Recycling; Supply chains; material availability; material scarcity; platinum; supply risk;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Electronics and the Environment, 2008. ISEE 2008. IEEE International Symposium on

Conference_Location

San Francisco, CA

Print_ISBN

978-1-4244-2272-2

Electronic_ISBN

978-1-4244-2298-2

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/ISEE.2008.4562902

Filename

4562902