As the "teeth of industry", cemented carbide is widely used in military industry, aerospace, mechanical processing, metallurgy, oil drilling, mining tools, electronic communications, construction and other fields. With the development of downstream industries, the market demand for cemented carbide continues to increase. In the future, the manufacturing of high-tech weapons and equipment, the progress of cutting-edge science and technology, and the rapid development of nuclear energy will greatly increase the demand for cemented carbide products with high technology content and high quality stability. Cemented carbide can also be used to make rock drilling tools, mining tools, drilling tools, measuring tools, metal grinding tools, precision bearings, nozzles, hardware molds, etc.

What is cemented carbide? Cemented carbide is an alloy material made of hard compounds of refractory metals and bonding metals through powder metallurgy. It is a powder metallurgy product made of micron-sized powder of high-hardness refractory metal carbides (tungsten carbide-WC, titanium carbide-TiC) as the main component, cobalt (Co) or nickel (Ni), molybdenum (Mo) as a binder, sintered in a vacuum furnace or a hydrogen reduction furnace. It has a series of excellent properties such as high hardness, wear resistance, good strength and toughness, heat resistance, and corrosion resistance. In particular, its high hardness and wear resistance remain basically unchanged even at a temperature of 500°C, and it still has a high hardness at 1000°C. At the same time, with the development of coating technology, the wear resistance and hardness of cemented carbide tools have made a breakthrough leap.

Tungsten is an important component of cemented carbide raw materials, and more than 80% of tungsten is needed in the synthesis process of cemented carbide. China is the country with the richest tungsten resources in the world. According to USGS data, the world's tungsten ore reserves in 2019 were about 3.2 million tons, of which China's tungsten ore reserves were 1.9 million tons, accounting for nearly 60%; there are many domestic tungsten carbide production companies, such as Xiamen Tungsten Industry, China Tungsten High-tech, Jiangxi Tungsten Industry, Guangdong Xianglu Tungsten Industry, Ganzhou Zhangyuan Tungsten Industry, etc. are all large-scale manufacturers of tungsten carbide, and the supply is sufficient.

China is the country with the largest production of cemented carbide in the world. According to statistics from the China Tungsten Industry Association, in the first half of 2022, the national cemented carbide industry enterprises produced a total of 23,000 tons of cemented carbide, a year-on-year increase of 0.2%; achieved a main business income of 18.753 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 17.52%; and achieved a profit of 1.648 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 22.37%.

The demand areas of the cemented carbide market, such as new energy vehicles, electronic information and communications, ships, artificial intelligence, aerospace, CNC machine tools, new energy, metal molds, infrastructure construction, etc., are still growing rapidly. Since 2022, due to the impact of changes in the international situation such as the intensification of regional conflicts, the EU countries, an important region for global cemented carbide production and consumption, have seen a sharp increase in cemented carbide production power costs and labor costs due to skyrocketing energy prices. China will be an important carrier for the transfer of its cemented carbide industry.