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Welcome to the July edition of the graphite miners news.
July saw more news on the huge demand wave ahead for lithium ion batteries (CAGR of 47% to 2032) and further moves by governments and companies to secure their supply chain of critical metals. The big news was Ford/SK On entering an MOU with Syrah Resources to evaluate sourcing active anode material supply from Syrah’s Vidalia AAM facility in USA.
Graphite price news
During the past 30 days the China graphite flake-194 EXW spot price was not updated (up 0.23% the past 60 days) and is up 15.18% over the past 360 days. Note that 94-97% is considered best suited for use in batteries; it is then upgraded to 99.9% purity to make “spherical” graphite used in Li-ion batteries. The spherical graphite 99.95% min EXW China price was down 1.66% the past 30 days.
Fastmarkets (see below, not updated this month) shows China graphite flake 94% C (-100 mesh) prices at US$830/t and Europe graphite flake 94% C (-100 mesh) prices at US$920/t.
Fastmarkets graphite prices the week ending June 16, 2022 (no update available for July 2022)
Fastmarkets
Source: Fastmarkets
Note: You can read about the different types of graphite and their uses here.
A reminder of a 2016 Elon Musk quote:
Our cells should be called Nickel-Graphite, because primarily the cathode is nickel and the anode side is graphite with silicon oxide.
Graphite demand and supply forecast charts
UBS’s EV metals demand forecast (from…
