Tellurium: Characteristics
The brittle metalloid prized for what its compounds do
What this tab covers The supply and physical characteristics of the commodity. Supply: current production, inventories and stocks, capacity utilisation, geographic and producer concentration, how fast supply responds to price, the project pipeline and capital spending, and logistics and export flows. Material: the physical and chemical properties that set its grade, price and end uses (for example purity and conductivity for metals, API gravity, sulfur and energy content for fuels, moisture, protein and fibre quality for crops).Supply volume characteristics
| Characteristic | Figure | What it means | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| Current production volume | about 1,000 t refined tellurium (2025e), up from 981 t in 2024 | China refined 800 t, Russia 67 t, Japan 61 t, Sweden 48 t (in concentrate) and Canada 28 t. US output, sold as copper telluride for refining abroad, is withheld and excluded from the total. | USGS MCS 2026 |
| Inventory and stock levels | not published; no exchange or government stocks | US producer stocks are withheld and the US holds no government stockpile. There is no exchange warehouse. The main hidden stock is tellurium left unrecovered in copper anode slimes: about 1,200 t a year could have been recovered against output near 500 t in 2008. | USGS MCS 2026; USGS Circular 1365 (2010) |
| Capacity utilisation | about 77% of refinery capacity (1,000 t output against 1,300 t capacity, 2025e, derived) | China ran at about 80% (800 of 1,000 t), Japan about 81%, Russia about 84%, Uzbekistan only 36% (18 of 50 t). Spare capacity is mainly Chinese, which matters because China's export licensing set the 2025 price. | USGS MCS 2026 (derived) |
| Geographic and producer concentration | China about 78%, top 3 (China, Russia, Japan) about 90%, HHI about 6,200 (2025, derived); WMD 2024 HHI 6,242 | Company shares are not published. 5N Plus refines much of the non-Chinese supply and First Solar is the dominant buyer, so both ends of the chain are concentrated. | USGS MCS 2026 (derived); World Mining Data 2026 |
| Supply elasticity | very low in the short run: by-product of copper refining (companionality about 95%) | Copper output never responds to tellurium prices. Supply can rise only by adding slime-treatment circuits, which are cheap and quick: Kennecott's 20 t/yr circuit cost $2.9 million and took about two years. Recovery is only about 55% of tellurium in slimes, up to 80% with better processing. | Argus (2022); NREL (2012); USGS MCS 2026 |
| Project pipeline and CapEx | about 300 t/yr of idle refinery capacity plus small new slime circuits | Rio Tinto's Kennecott circuit (Utah, 20 t/yr, started 2022). China's capacity of 1,000 t has room above 2025 output of 800 t. On the demand side, First Solar's fifth US plant is due to start by end-2026, taking US CdTe capacity to about 14 GW a year. | Argus (2022); USGS MCS 2026 |
| Logistics and export flows | most refined tellurium crosses borders; no separate HS code value is reported in the tile data | Copper telluride moves from US refineries to Canada and Asia for refining, and refined metal and CdTe powder move to module plants in the US, Malaysia, Vietnam and India. US imports in 2021-24 came from Canada 64%, Philippines 14%, Japan 8%. The chokepoint is Chinese export licensing from February 2025 (about 45 days per licence). | USGS MCS 2026 |
Material characteristics Metal / hard commodity
Tellurium is a brittle, silvery metalloid sold for its electronic behaviour rather than its strength. Its value comes from compounds: cadmium telluride, a direct-band-gap semiconductor for thin-film solar, and bismuth telluride, the best room-temperature thermoelectric. Purity is the key commercial property, since solar and thermoelectric grades need 5N or better, while steel and rubber users take lower grades.
| Property | Value / specification | Why it matters | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| Purity / grade | 99.95% min (US warehouse benchmark), 99.99% (Rotterdam benchmark); 99.999% (5N) and higher for CdTe and thermoelectrics | Sets which price series applies and whether material can go into semiconductors | Argus via USGS MCS 2026; 5N Plus product grades |
| Band gap of CdTe | about 1.45-1.5 eV, direct | Close to ideal for a single-junction solar cell, so a film a few microns thick absorbs most sunlight | NREL (2012) |
| Thermoelectric figure of merit (Bi2Te3) | ZT about 1 near room temperature | Makes bismuth telluride the standard for solid-state coolers and small generators | Standard materials literature (indicative) |
| Melting point and density | 449.5 C; 6.24 g/cm3 | Low melting point allows vapour deposition of CdTe and easy alloying in steel and copper | CRC Handbook of Chemistry and Physics |
| Machinability additive | small additions to steel, copper and lead | Improves free-machining without much loss of copper conductivity; selenium, sulfur and lead can substitute | USGS MCS 2026 |
| Intensity of use in solar | about 69-91 t Te per GW of CdTe modules | Links tellurium demand directly to solar build-out | NREL (2012); Fortis Metals (2018) |