Bismuth, Selenium & Tellurium (Minor Metals, Ingot & Powder)

Three copper- and lead-refinery by-product metals on one page: 4N bismuth ingot, 99.5% selenium powder and 99.99%+ tellurium, from Japanese, Korean, Belgian, Canadian and Peruvian refiners

Bismuth, selenium and tellurium are by-products before they are commodities: none is mined for itself at scale, all three come out of the anode slimes of electrolytic copper refineries and, for bismuth, out of lead refining, and supply follows the copper and lead smelters rather than demand. That is why the refiners are the origins on this page, and why China, which refines the most copper and lead, dominates all three. Bismuth: USGS Mineral Commodity Summaries 2026 estimates 2025 world refinery production at about 16,000 MT, with China 14,000 MT (88%), Korea 1,000 MT, Japan 500 MT, Laos 500 MT and Kazakhstan 180 MT; end uses in 2024 were pharmaceuticals and chemicals 30%, metallurgical additives 24% (free-machining steels, aluminium and lead-free brass, where bismuth replaces lead), fusible alloys 17% (low-melting solders, sprinkler triggers, tube-bending fillers), catalysts 10% and pigments and cosmetics 9%. The trade grade is 99.99% (4N) ingot of about 10–14 kg, with 99.97% for pharmaceutical processing and needle and powder forms for alloying; Korea Zinc's Onsan smelter, Japanese lead and copper refiners and Belgian lead refining supply the non-Chinese ingot and bismuth-lead alloy, and a Canadian company runs the largest bismuth-chemicals business for pharmaceuticals from a plant in Germany. On 4 February 2025 China placed metallic bismuth and three bismuth compounds under export licensing (Announcement No. 10 of 2025), and USGS records the 2025 Rotterdam bismuth average at roughly four times the 2024 average, the highest on record. Selenium: refined from copper anode slimes at Japanese, Belgian (Hoboken), Canadian, German, Finnish, Polish and Peruvian refineries, with China at about 53% of 2025 world refinery output per USGS; trade forms are metal powder, granules and flakes at 99.5% minimum, crude selenium at about 85% from refineries, and selenium dioxide; end uses are metallurgy 40% (largely as an additive in electrolytic manganese metal production, which is why the selenium price tracks the manganese cycle), agriculture and animal health 20% (sodium selenite feed premixes), glass 20% (decolourising and the red colourant), electronics and photovoltaics 10% and chemicals and pigments 5%. Tellurium: the same slimes carry it, at up to a few percent, and China refined about 75% of the world's tellurium in 2024 with Canada, Japan, Peru and the USA the other refiners; commercial grade is 99.5% minimum and photovoltaic grade runs 99.99% to 99.99999%, because the largest use, about 70%, is cadmium telluride thin-film solar cells, followed by thermoelectric devices at 15% and metallurgy at 10% (free-machining steel and copper, lead-battery grid hardening); the Canadian refiner that supplies cadmium telluride to the largest thin-film module maker buys tellurium from copper refineries including a new 18 MT-a-year recovery circuit at a US copper smelter. Tellurium and its compounds were placed under Chinese export licensing in the same February 2025 announcement as bismuth.

The buyers are pharmaceutical and fine-chemical makers (bismuth subsalicylate, subcitrate and oxychloride), free-machining steel and brass mills, solder and fusible-alloy makers, feed-premix and fertiliser blenders, glass plants, electrolytic manganese producers, thermoelectric module makers and thin-film solar manufacturers. CBIL is a commodity brokerage company and brokers bismuth ingot, selenium and tellurium from Japanese, Korean, Belgian, Canadian and Peruvian refiner and trader lots, and from China only with the exporter's export licence, against the refiner's certificate of analysis per lot and SGS, Alfred H Knight or Bureau Veritas sampling and assay: for bismuth, Bi with Pb, Ag, Cu, Fe, As, Sb, Zn and Te; for selenium, Se with Te, Fe, Cu, Pb, S and Cl; for tellurium, Te with Se, Cu, Pb, Fe, S and, for photovoltaic grade, the full trace-element sheet by ICP. Because they are worth thousands of dollars a tonne and above, all three are lot-by-lot goods: minimum lots are confirmed per product and refiner, from a few hundred kilograms of tellurium in cases to 5–20 MT of bismuth ingot on pallets, and independent weighing and sealing at stuffing is part of every contract. Selenium powder ships as UN 2658 Class 6.1 and tellurium compounds may be classified, so packaging and declarations follow the material safety data sheet; bismuth metal is not classified. UN Comtrade 2024 export declarations under HS 2804.90 (selenium) total USD 95 million and 3,989 MT across 41 reporting countries, and under HS 2804.50 (boron and tellurium together) USD 218 million and 3,461 MT across 36 reporters; HS 8106 bismuth declarations were not retrievable at the time of writing and are not quoted. Fastmarkets and Argus publish Rotterdam assessments for bismuth 99.99%, selenium 99.5% and tellurium 99.99%. Send the metal, grade and form, your impurity ceilings, the lot size and delivery point, and the enquiry is worked against current refiner and warehouse positions.

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Excluded origins are not offered, including product re-exported, blended or re-processed through a third country. Every lot moves with a certificate of origin naming the producing plant, mine or grower country, and nothing is quoted before the seller and loading point are known.