Rhenium Prices
The current price of Rhenium is $4,385.80 per kg.
Please note that the price provided is the retail price for private investors and is aligned with industry retail pricing. For bulk purchases, whether investment or industry, please contact us for a quotation.
Table: Rhenium Historical Prices and Price Changes
| Date | Rhenium Price | Change % to Today | Annual Change % |
|---|---|---|---|
| Dec 05 2025 | $4,385.80 / kg | ||
| Jan 1 2025 | $2,485.90 / kg | +76.43% | |
| Jan 1 2024 | $1,995.00 / kg | +119.84% | +23.36% |
| Jan 1 2023 | $1,606.60 / kg | +172.99% | +24.18% |
| Jan 1 2022 | $1,730.10 / kg | +153.50% | -7.14% |
| Jan 1 2021 | $1,405.00 / kg | +212.16% | +23.14% |
| Jan 1 2020 | $1,711.50 / kg | +156.25% | -17.91% |
| Jan 1 2019 | $1,869.32 / kg | +134.62% | -8.44% |
| Jan 1 2018 | $2,118.90 / kg | +106.98% | -11.78% |
Rhenium Historical Price Movement
At today’s price of $4,385.80 per kg, rhenium has changed +76.43% since the start of 2025. It gained +119.84% since the start of last year and is up +172.99% since Jan 2023.
This strategic metal is up +212.16% compared to its price of $1,405 per kg on Jan 1st 2021. If we go back more years to Jan 1st 2018, when the cost of rhenium was $2,118.90 per kg, then the change is +106.98%.
Rhenium is an extremely rare and dense chemical element with atomic number 75, which makes it a part of the transitional metals group. It has a silver-grey appearance and melts at an incredibly high temperature of 3,186 degrees Celsius / 5,767 Fahrenheit.
Let’s look at the various uses of rhenium and who produces it first in order to make an educated forecast on its future price (or click here to jump to the rhenium forecast).
Rhenium Uses
Rhenium’s remarkable properties make it indispensable across some of the world’s most advanced industries, from aerospace and defense to energy, electronics, and medicine.
Aerospace & Defense
Rhenium’s extreme heat resistance and tensile strength make it a key ingredient in the superalloys used for jet engine turbines, rocket nozzles, and combustion chambers. These nickel-based alloys typically contain up to 6% rhenium, which dramatically improves performance and durability at temperatures exceeding 1,000 °C. The metal is also used in tungsten-rhenium thermocouples, crucial for precise temperature measurements in high-performance engines.
Energy & Catalysis
Rhenium is a cornerstone of modern refining technology. When added to platinum catalysts, it enhances efficiency and longevity in oil refining and fuel-reforming processes, reducing energy consumption and emissions. It also contributes to next-generation combustion systems in both power plants and industrial gas turbines, helping to improve efficiency and lower environmental impact.
Electronics & Technology
Rhenium’s excellent conductivity and stability make it ideal for electrical contacts, filaments, and electrodes. It is used in mass spectrometers, X-ray tubes, and specialised high-temperature electronic components, where reliability under stress is essential.
Medical & Research Applications
In the medical field, rhenium is gaining ground as a radiotherapeutic isotope. Rhenium-186 and Rhenium-188 are used in targeted cancer treatments and radiolabeled compounds for tumor imaging. These innovations are expanding rhenium’s role from an industrial material to a life-saving medical resource.
Emerging & Future Uses
As research intensifies, new applications continue to emerge, from additive manufacturing (3D-printed superalloys) to advanced coatings and quantum technologies. With no viable substitutes and an expanding range of uses, rhenium’s strategic importance is expected to grow significantly in the coming decade.
Where is Rhenium Produced?
Rhenium is the rarest stable element in the Earth’s crust, occurring at well below one part per billion. It is never found in mineable concentrations of its own and must be recovered as a by-product, primarily during the processing of molybdenum concentrates from large porphyry copper deposits. These ores typically contain only 0.001% to 0.2% rhenium, which makes extraction technically demanding and economically sensitive.
Global primary production remains extremely limited. The backbone of supply comes from just a handful of countries:
Chile: by far the most important source, thanks to its enormous copper industry and associated molybdenum recovery.
United States: primarily from molybdenum operations in Arizona, Utah, and Colorado.
Kazakhstan, Poland, and China: smaller but still meaningful contributors to global refinery output.
In total, annual worldwide production is estimated at around 40–50 tonnes of newly recovered rhenium, with an additional 12–15 tonnes coming from recycling and catalyst recovery. Even when combined, the entire global market sits at only ~62 tonnes per year, meaning any disruption, whether from Chilean copper politics, refinery maintenance, or shifts in aerospace demand, can have an outsized effect on price and availability.
Because rhenium extraction depends on the economics of copper and molybdenum mining rather than its own supply-demand fundamentals, production cannot easily scale in response to rising demand. This structural constraint is one of the key reasons rhenium remains both strategically important and persistently scarce.
What Factors Determine the Price of Rhenium?
Rhenium’s price is shaped by a combination of extreme scarcity, inflexible supply, and high-intensity industrial demand. Because the market is so small, barely 62 tonnes of annual supply worldwide, even modest shifts in consumption can trigger outsized price movements.
Demand-Driven Volatility
Rhenium is essential in jet engines, rocket nozzles, gas turbines, catalysts, and other high-temperature systems where no substitute exists. When demand rises from aviation, aerospace, or energy technologies, the market feels it immediately. Large order cycles from aircraft manufacturers or refiners can push prices sharply higher.
Constrained Supply
Supply is inherently tight because rhenium is not mined directly. It is recovered only as a by-product of molybdenum production, which itself is tied to global copper mining. This means rhenium output cannot easily increase when demand rises; production is dictated by copper and molybdenum markets, not by rhenium’s own price signal.
The extraction and recovery process is technically complex and expensive, further limiting how much material can economically reach the market.
Limited Dependence on China
Unlike rare earths and many other strategic metals, the rhenium supply chain is not dominated by China. While China is among the top producers, its output is largely consumed domestically. For Western industries, the critical suppliers remain Chile, the United States, Kazakhstan, and Poland.
This makes rhenium one of the few critical metals not directly exposed to Chinese export restrictions, but it doesn’t make the market any less fragile. Its bottleneck is geological and metallurgical, not geopolitical.
Rhenium Price Forecast
Current Price Snapshot
As of December 2025, rhenium is trading at a remarkable +76% increase since January 1, 2025, and an impressive +120 % jump from January 1, 2024.
What’s Fueling the Ascent?
Sky-high demand from China’s aviation expansion: State-backed growth in aircraft manufacturing has pushed demand for rhenium alloys—critical components in jet engines—to new highs, straining supply even further.
A tight supply base: With global production stuck at around 62 tonnes annually, minor shifts in demand ripple significantly through the market. Chile, as the world’s leading copper producer, plays a central role in this equation: rhenium is recovered as a by-product of molybdenum extraction during copper mining, making Chile a critical gatekeeper of supply.
Critical reclassification in the U.S.: The US Geological Survey has reintroduced rhenium to its list of critical minerals
- Deficit intensifying recycling efforts: The market is grappling with a persistent supply deficit that even expanded recycling efforts cannot offset
- Market driven by fundamentals, not speculation: Unlike other metals, rhenium trades mostly via term contracts with small spot volumes—meaning prices are grounded in genuine demand shifts, not volatile investor behavior.
A Metal With an Unusual Track Record
Rhenium’s price history makes its current rally stand out even more. Between the start of the 2010s and 2023, it was the only one of our strategic metals to experience a sustained decline. That downward trend was largely driven by muted demand from catalyst markets and steady by-product supply out of Chile. Many assumed rhenium’s star had faded.
Today, the picture looks radically different. China’s state-subsidised aviation industry, Western aerospace giants forecasting tens of thousands of new aircraft, and the absence of any viable substitute in turbine alloys have catapulted rhenium back into the spotlight. This turnaround underscores just how vulnerable the market is when demand spikes in a sector with no alternatives.
Forecast: Where It’s Headed
Looking ahead, global rhenium demand is forecast to rise steadily through 2034, reaching nearly $1 billion in market value. Analysts expect a CAGR of roughly 4.8% through the next decade, with aerospace and defense remaining the backbone of consumption. Specialty applications—such as additive manufacturing, catalysts, and advanced medical devices—are also expected to expand.
Strategic Takeaways
Rhenium’s price momentum is firmly rooted in aerospace demand—substitution is not an option, and production isn’t ramping up quickly enough.
Strategic moves by governments highlight rhenium’s importance—with Washington already acting and Brussels likely to follow.
Supply constraints aren’t easing, and even improved recycling and secondary recovery won’t keep pace with the forecasted demand curve.
Markets are splitting between immediate high-pressure demand (aviation, defense, tech) and longer-term steady growth in broader applications like catalysts and electronics.
How to Buy Rhenium
With its high melting point and impressive mechanical properties, rhenium is a coveted material in many industries. To ensure they get the best quality available, major corporate buyers such as Boeing, Airbus, and NASA tend to rely on renowned metal dealers who are able to source industry-grade rhenium of 99.9% purity or higher.
By guaranteeing product provenance, these so-called ‘key intermediaries’ also make it possible for global companies to access hard-to-find rare earth elements quickly and safely – something not achievable by buying online through less reputable channels like Amazon or Alibaba.
Rhenium should only be purchased from trusted sources that can deliver certifiable levels of quality control; otherwise, the metal can only be liquidated to hobbyists. We’re the only globally licensed industry supplier offering private investors the option to purchase and safely store industry-grade rhenium. Hence any discerning investor who wants to own some and benefit from potential future price increases can do this safely with us.
Rhenium futures contracts are also traded on the Shanghai Metal Market (SMM).
How to Sell Rhenium
If you have some rhenium at home, you should be able to sell it to other hobbyists via online marketplaces like eBay, Alibaba, and Amazon. The price you get will depend on what they offer, but it won’t be anywhere near the market price.
When it comes to selling industrial-grade rhenium, buyers like Lockheed Martin, SpaceX, and Boeing require more than just a secure transaction. To ensure that only quality materials are circulated in their production processes, they source their supply from trustworthy suppliers who can present documentary evidence of how each metal has been managed since its production – known as the chain of custody. That’s why they don’t shop on eBay.
Our investors can be confident that the liquidation of their strategic metals to industry buyers is secure and swift, as we are such a trusted industry supplier.
All prices on this page last updated Dec 05 2025.