The ferrochrome industry’s plea for the South African government’s help has fallen on deaf ears, allowing China to wrest South Africa’s top world ferrochrome spot, ironically with the overwhelming use of South Africa’s very own raw chromite ore. The South African industry had asked for a short-term export duty and a long-term single-channel marketing arrangement, out of fear that China’s inroads would destroy 80 000 of ferrochrome’s 200 000 local jobs and R21-billion of the R42-billion a year that the beneficiated metal contributes to South Africa’s gross domestic product (GDP). But lobbying in the opposite direction by South Africa’s chrome producing platinum industry and chrome ore traders caused a stalemate. This has left the ferrochrome industry holding thumbs that market forces will eventually unravel China’s flawed ferrochrome business model, which has both cost and pollution downsides. Local beneficiation of the ore adds five times more to GDP and creates three times more jobs than straight exportation of the raw ore.