Spherical material to lead rebound in graphite demand

• Autores: Shruti Salwan
• Localización: Industrial Minerals, ISSN 0019-8544, Nº. 581, 2016 (Ejemplar dedicado a: Marzo)
• Idioma: inglés
• Texto completo no disponible (Saber más ...)
• Resumen

  • China's dominance of the global graphite industry is expanding to encompass value-added products, as the country continues to redirect graphite raw material away from cheap, bulk exports in favour of higher priced items such as spherical graphite for the battery industry.

    Spherical graphite accounted for around 51% of China's total natural graphite revenues for the last 12 months, with exports up by around 303% on 2009 levels - the first year that the country began exporting the material - illustrating that the battery graphite market has been more resilient to economic fluctuations than the industrial graphite segment over the last two years.

    Refractories, which still consume more than 40% of the flake graphite produced worldwide, have seen declining output as a direct knock on effect from the slowdown in the global steel market. This has created overcapacity in the graphite sector, as additional production sources which began to accumulate during the boom years (2010-2011) have now become a structural problem for the industry.