The division, which handled about half of China’s silver exports last year, is aiming to hire more physical and derivative traders for industrial and precious metals, said Eric Hu, general manager of the trading arm, in an interview in Singapore last Friday (May 10).

The company hopes to grow its trading team in Singapore from the current four persons, to 15 to 20, said Hu, a two-decade silver market veteran who currently leads a group of more than 100 metals traders and other staff across Shanghai, Hong Kong and Singapore.

“I know it is not easy and [it] will take a long time, as competition for talent is getting intense,” he said.

Metals markets are being transformed by increasing demand from renewable energy installations, artificial intelligence and supply shortfalls. That’s encouraging some of the world’s biggest energy traders to get more involved in metals, a sector that has been dominated by behemoths Glencore plc and Trafigura Group.

Jin Li Industrial International Pte Ltd, the Chinese company’s Singaporean subsidiary that officially started operations last October, has hired Noel Ruan from Mercuria Energy Group and Bruce Wang from Citigroup Inc in the past six months, Hu said. Both confirmed their own moves.

The company’s Hong Kong trading subsidiary sold about 2,000 tonnes of silver ingots from different smelters in China to overseas clients in 2023, including top bullion banks such as JPMorgan Chase & Co., Hu said. China exported 4,113 tonnes of silver last year, official customs data shows.