Russia’s dependence on iodine imports

Abstract

Iodine is in use in health protection, medicine, veterinary and in chemical industry (as catalyzer in production of artificial rubber). The global production of iodine is 30 kt/yr, and its major producers are Chile (to 20 kt/yr) and Japan (to 9 kt/yr). The top global producer of iodide is China. The largest volumes of iodine in the world is consumed in iodation of white salt. The authors audit the flows of iodine commodities in Russia over the period 2002–2021. These are the small markets consuming iodine in the size of 250–400 t/yr and iodide in the size of 80–150 t/yr. In 2009–2021 the iodine imports from Chile, Turkmenistan and Azerbaijan were 200–400 t/yr (95–100% of consumption size). The iodide imports from Canada, Turkmenistan and Finland made up 7–140 t/yr (87–97% of consumption size). Russia suffers from total dependence on import of these raw materials. The problem connected with the dependence on iodine and iodide imports against the background of increasing size of their consumption can be solved in a few ways, namely, development of the prepared hydromineral iodine–bromine resources; improvement and technological innovations in mining and processing of hydromineral resources; stabilization of flow of iodine imports from Azerbaijan and Turkmenistan, via spot markets, with provision of interests of the Russian importers and allied exporters, and with maintenance of sustainability of supplies.The study was supported by the Russian Science Foundation, Project No. 22-28-01742.