Turning world's by-products into treasure

"The Foolish Old Man (Yugong) Who Removes the Mountains", an ancient Chinese fable, tells of Yugong who faced two great peaks — Taihang and Wangwu — blocking his doorway. He called on his sons to dig up the mountains, and finally forced two angels to carry them away.

The birthplace of this story is Jiyuan — or literally the Source of the Ji River — a city directly administered by Central China's Henan province.

And in Jiyuan today, a new fable is being written, showing that a local nonferrous metal giant has been transporting mountains of rocks, mineral powder and waste batteries from the world over during the past 69 years and maximizing full recovery of all available resources, before turning the leftovers into brick-like building materials.

Wang Yongjun is a senior staffer at State-owned Henan Yuguang Group — ranking among China's top 500 enterprises as a nonferrous metal manufacturer with revenue exceeding 100 billion yuan ($14.68 billion) in 2025. Wang has witnessed its growth since joining the company in 1989.

Today, its core business spans nonferrous and precious metal smelting, new materials, equipment manufacturing, international trade and resource development.

Yuguang is proud that its major product capacities are leading in China, with the highest production capacities for lead, lead-zinc, lead-zinc alloy new materials, silver and recycled lead nationwide, Wang said.

Its headquarters in Jiyuan host enterprises including Yuguang Gold& Lead — which was listed in 2002 as the first listed company in the domestic lead smelting industry — and Yuguang Zinc Industry, he said.

Precious metals

Wang said Yuguang's main products and annual capacity are: lead at 400,000 metric tons, zinc (300,000 tons), copper (100,000 tons), gold (5,000 kilograms), silver (700 tons), and sulfuric acid (1.1 million tons).

Starting as Jiyuan Comprehensive Smelting Plant in 1959, Yuguang began to produce the first batch of electrolytic lead and started extracting gold and silver from its lead anode mud in 1969.

Taking full advantage of its silver production, Yuguang is engaged in the deep processing of gold and silver products, forming a precious metals comprehensive recovery and deep processing industry chain.

Statistics showed that while China's gold output in 2025 reached 552.02 tons — including 381.339 tons of domestic raw material gold output (China Gold Association figures) and 170.681 tons of imported raw material smelting — Yuguang's gold output hit 13.45 tons.

Meanwhile, China's silver output hit some 3,300 to 3,426 tons in 2025, with 95 percent of it coming from by-products of lead-zinc copper mine smelting, while Yuguang saw 1,700 tons of it.

Today, Jiyuan is being dubbed the "Silver City of China", said Wang, proudly pointing to a 50-kg silver ingot displayed in the company's exhibition hall.

He said Yuguang has consistently adhered to a development philosophy of "Moving Mountains Like the Foolish Old Man and Serving the Nation Through Industry".

In 2023, it was selected by the State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission of the State Council as one of the enterprises tapped to create world-class and professional leading models.

Committed to building a national strategic base for high-quality nonferrous materials, Yuguang is endeavoring to see revenue from its main businesses in copper, lead and zinc — and its revenue from services-oriented manufacturing — both surpass 100 billion yuan by the end of the 15th Five-Year Plan period (2026-30), said Zhao Jingang, Party secretary and chairman of Yuguang.

Technical strides

"Yuguang's expansion has depended on its six technological revolutions in lead and copper smelting, thrice winning the National Science and Technology Progress Award, and helped formulate nearly 200 national and industry standards," Zhao said.

Owning over 70 wholly owned and controlled subsidiaries, Yuguang's products — such as lead ingots, zinc ingots, Grade A copper, and silver ingots — are dual-certified brands at home and abroad, Zhao added.

Wu Yanxin, a research staff member at Yuguang, said his company has dared to innovate and forge ahead.

In the lead oxidation stage, its oxygen bottom-blown technology has revolutionized China's lead industry by shifting production from sintering machines to molten bath smelting.

"This disruptive technological breakthrough fundamentally eliminates sulfur dioxide pollution at the source, bringing us our first National Science and Technology Progress Award," Wu said.

"In the reduction stage, we've developed the direct reduction of liquid high-lead slag for one-step lead smelting, replacing coke with natural gas and ushering the lead industry into a 'coke-free' era. Our energy consumption is 56 percent lower than the national standard, which secured our second NSTPA," he said.

"In the comprehensive recovery stage, we adopt green and efficient rare and precious metal extraction technologies such as vacuum distillation to achieve high-value resource utilization and maximize full recovery of all available resources, earning us our third NSTPA," Wu added.

During the past 20 years, Yuguang has undertaken multiple national research programs including the National High Technology Research and Development Program (863 Program) and National Key R&D Projects.

"We have overcome more than 10 world-class core technical bottlenecks in the nonferrous metals sector, having been granted over 700 scientific and technological achievements at national, provincial and ministerial levels," Wu said.

New and strategic material

Zhang Xiaomin, an exhibition hall guide, is proud that with its high-tech caliber, Yuguang has been honored as a China top 500 enterprise, and ranked among China's manufacturing industry top 500.

Yuguang's technology and equipment are regarded as internationally and domestically leading, with a provincial technology center, postdoctoral research station and other research institutions, she said.

The company's leading products — "Yuguang" brand electrolytic lead and "Yuguang" brand silver — are listed on the London Metal Exchange and the London Bullion Market Association, respectively.

Zhang added that as China's largest lead smelting enterprise, Yuguang's zinc smelting capacity and copper smelting technology are also among the nation's best.

To extend its industrial chain, Yuguang has also developed alloy products, with over 30 varieties of lead-based and zinc-based alloys.

Its products are mainly used in semiconductors, crystals and sensors, Zhang said.

Zhao said Yuguang also shoulders the mission of safeguarding the security of the nation's vital strategic materials, and its strategic positioning is to establish an important strategic national material base for nonferrous metal new materials.

"New materials represent a crucial growth sector for Yuguang's future development," Zhao said, adding that it is transitioning from raw materials to new materials, while also paying vital attention to developing strategic materials.

"In Yuguang's new material product matrix, there are over 100 products in four major categories — alloys, high-purity materials, new energy, along with rare and precious materials," he said.

Zhao emphasized that Yuguang intends to update and replace key equipment and production scenarios with machines to promote intelligent construction.

"By generating new data through device updates and machine replacement, Yuguang will ultimately turn into an intelligent factory, fully linking its 12,000 sets of equipment, 54 kilns, 60,000 data points and 79 workshops on its 106-hectare factory area," Zhao said.

Global cooperation

"While keeping a nationwide vision and embracing global markets, Yuguang has grown into a large international conglomerate with global sourcing and global sales, delivering solid support for the Belt and Road Initiative," Zhao said.

He said the company owns over 10 mining enterprises distributed at home and abroad, with domestic mining bases scattered around the provinces of Gansu, Sichuan and Yunnan, with overseas mines located in Australia, Indonesia and other regions.

Yuguang imports millions of tons of mineral powder each year, moving mountains of foreign resources to Yuguang for smelting, Zhao said.

In the face of tight international mineral supplies and trade barriers, Zhao highlighted the need to "go global" and negotiate with overseas suppliers to solve the raw materials dilemma and provide assistance for Yuguang's globalized operation.

During the 15th Five-Year Plan period, Yuguang will accelerate its transformation from raw materials to new materials, and bolster its key projects through international cooperation, he said.