Chain Reaction: Virus Darkens Future Of Albania's Chromium Miners

Bulqiz�, Albania, (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 11th Nov, 2020 ) :With mountains of chromite piling sky high on the docks of the port behind him in the Albanian city of Durres, logistics manager Henri Kurti explains the hold up.

"When China and America have problems, we have even bigger problems in Bulqize," he says, referring to the region to the east where the blue-grey metal is mined before being shipped around the world.

As the coronavirus pandemic rocks international commerce, knock-on effects are being felt in poor corners of the world like Albania, where chromium miners have nowhere to sell their goods due to a drop off in purchases from China.

The Balkan country's chromium sector is entirely dependent on exports, leaving the men and women who extract it at the mercy of world prices.

"These last few months have been very difficult with the pandemic, the fear of losing our work," says Florent Veseli, a 33-year-old drilling inside a cold, damp mine under a mountain in the Bulqize region.

"If the mine closes, we will have nothing left, we will no longer be able to feed our families." Chromium, a hard metal used chiefly to make stainless steel, has been a struggling commodity for more than two years owing to a shrinking appetite from leading consumer China.

A trade war between Washington and Beijing had also injected volatility into the market.

But Covid-19 "dealt the final blow" because "many industries at the end of the value chain have slowed down," Sheraz Neffati, executive director of the International Chromium Development Association, told AFP.