YUNNAN Tin Co. Group, the world’s top tin producer, had limited production to underpin world prices, a top executive said yesterday.

Yunnan Tin was running a trial at a 20,000-ton-a-year smelter operated by its Indonesian unit, boosting its total tin capacity to 100,000 tons a year, Xiao Jianming, chairman of the board said.

“We have the capacity but output does not have to reach 100,000 tons a year,” Xiao told reporters in Hong Kong.

“We need to secure supplies of raw materials. We also want to control output. If we increase output, world prices will fall,” Xiao said.

Xiao said he expected world tin prices to be maintained at the current multi-year highs level in 2008.

World tin prices hit a contract high of US$17,575 a ton on Nov. 14 due to supply worries over exports from Indonesia, the second-largest tin producing country after China.

“We want to control world prices, therefore we set plans on production to keep a supply-demand relation. Now, the supply is below demand,” Xiao said of international markets.

Yunnan Tin would produce 60,000 tons of refined tin this year, of which about 7,000 tons would come from its plant in Singapore and 53,000 tons from plants in Yunnan and Hunan provinces in China.

The firm produced about 70 percent of its ore, Xiao said.

Yunnan Tin operated five tin mines in China.

Xiao said the firm’s Indonesian unit was based on Bangka island, also the home of PT Timah Tbk, the world’s second-largest tin producer, and mined ore there. The unit supplied crude tin to its refining plant in Singapore.

Yunnan Tin would add investments in the Indonesian unit in the future, he said.

Yunnan Tin, which controls Shenzhen-listed Yunnan Tin Co. and Shanghai-listed Sino-Platinum Metals, also produces copper and nickel in Yunnan Province.

It planned to upgrade its 30,000-ton-a-year copper smelter, boosting the capacity to 100,000 tons a year in two years, Xiao said. Copper ore would come from its project in Australia.

Yunnan Tin’s subsidiary in Australia owned a 33 percent stake in YTC Resources, which was exploring a property in Australia potentially containing more than 1 million tons of copper, Xiao said. The property was also expected to contain tin, nickel and tungsten reserves. (SD-Agencies)