Indium Metal Chain™
· ₹66,761.68/kg today
From mine to market: how Indium moves through the global economy.
Data year: 2025 · Chain data last reviewed: 9 September 2026 · not a live feed — see methodology.
How Indium Moves Through the Economy
Each stage below is a real, cited figure — click any stage for its full description and source.
Recovery (Zinc-Ore Byproduct) Mining / Extraction
Indium is recovered almost entirely as a byproduct of zinc ore refining, with no significant dedicated indium mines.
High confidenceSource: USGS Mineral Commodity Summaries (via MetalsCost Metal Reserves) (2025)
Refining Processing / Refining
Byproduct indium is refined to high purity, chiefly for use as indium tin oxide (ITO) in touchscreens and displays.
China accounts for an estimated 70% of world indium production. Concentration: High
High confidenceSource: USGS Mineral Commodity Summaries 2025 (Indium) — view (2024)
Flat-Panel Displays (ITO) Manufacturing / End Use
Refined indium is made into indium tin oxide, the transparent conductive coating used on touchscreens, LCDs and solar panels.
Flat-panel displays (as indium tin oxide) account for an estimated 60% of indium consumption — the clearest single demand driver, though a full breakdown of the remaining uses was not found from a primary industry body. Concentration: High
Low confidenceSource: Grand View Research, Indium Market Analysis — view (2024)
Supply Chain at a Glance
The Metal Inside Every Touchscreen
Indium tin oxide (ITO) forms the transparent, conductive coating that makes touchscreens and LCD/OLED displays work at all — there's no widely-deployed substitute that matches its combination of transparency and conductivity, which keeps indium demand tightly linked to global display manufacturing output.
A Byproduct of Zinc, Not Its Own Mine
Like gallium, indium is recovered almost entirely as a byproduct of zinc ore refining rather than mined directly — China dominates that refining step, while the display panels it ends up in are overwhelmingly built in South Korea, Japan and China's own electronics factories.
Recycling Happens at the Factory, Not the Landfill
A large share of the indium consumed in display manufacturing never actually ends up on a finished screen — it's left over as spent sputtering-target material during the coating process, and specialized recyclers now recover the large majority of that leftover indium and tin for reuse. Manufacturing scrap, not old phones, is the real backbone of indium recycling today.
Did You Know?
Indium's total annual global supply is small enough that a single major refinery outage can noticeably tighten the market — a scale of fragility copper or aluminium simply doesn't have.
Frequently Asked Questions
Country-level production data for Indium is not yet available on this page.
The Indium price in India today is ₹66,761.68 per kilogram as of October 16, 2026. See the live price and chart.
Metal Chain™ is an analytical framework developed by MetalsCost. Concentration figures and the current-bottleneck comparison are estimates derived from available public data and a documented methodology — they are not investment advice or a guaranteed forecast. See the methodology page for data sources and calculation details.
