World relies on China for battery grade graphite World relies on China for battery grade graphite
Industrial Minerals Magazine
05 July 2012
Western producers play catch up to Chinese manufacturers of spherical graphite
...
China’s dominance of the world’s graphite industry is starting to spill over into value added products, new data from IM shows.
Research from The Natural Graphite Report 2012 documents the extent of the country’s dominance of spherical graphite production.
In 2011, China produced over 90% of the world’s uncoated spherical graphite produced from high quality flakes. Producers of lithium-ion batteries rely on the superior spherical graphite to produce high performance batteries for mobile energy and electric vehicles.
The non-Chinese graphite sector has used spherical graphite as its R&D battle ground in the last 18 months. An influx of junior miners, mainly from Canada, has seen a sharp increase of focus surrounding production techniques of battery grade material.
For many years western producers in Germany and the US have been attempting to develop more economic methods of producing spherical graphite without wasting 70% of the starting raw material, high quality flake product work in excess of $1,500/tonne. Present methods in China are unsustainable elsewhere in the world.
Graphite producers such as Graphit Kropfmühl, Superior Graphite, and Nacional de Grafite are developing production routes based on a more environmentally friendly method to acid-intensive practices Chinese companies’ use.
Canada-based junior Northern Graphite conducted significant research into new production methods using a larger size flake of +50 mesh sourced from its Bissett Creek project in Ontario.
Despite these efforts, no company outside of China has had sustained commercial success in this field.
The primary markets for battery-grade graphite are Japan and South Korea. Many of these companies purchase uncoated spherical graphite as a lower price to coated material needed for battery applications. Domestic coating facilities then finish the products for sale to the countries’ anode manufacturers.
These are the customers that new producers of spherical graphite want gain. But for now China is in a very strong position of exporting a higher value product instead of raw material, a position its government wants many of its other mineral industries to follow.
The Natural Graphite Report 2012 will be published by Industrial Minerals Research soon. It will be the world’s only report focusing solely and in detail on the natural graphite industry.