New pricing for high purity jumbo flake graphite!!!
99.9% Jumbo flake gets $6,000 per tonne!!!
Industrial Metals now quotes jumbo flake graphite at 99% to 99.9% purity. Prices start at $4,500 for 99% jumbo flake. The highest purity flake 99.9% commands $6,000 per tonne. This is big news as everyone will adjust cash flow models for Northern Graphite using double the price, $6,000 per tonne for their highest quality material instead of $3,000 or $2,500. It also makes high purity jumbo flake the most sought after material in the industry affirming that both purity and flake size are important. If you have jumbo flake and a high purity, you are going to have a winning product no matter how small the deposit.
A 200,000 tonne graphite deposit, if jumbo flake and high purity is worth $1.2B in-situ. For a reference, that would be around 2Mt at 10%Cg. Even defining a deposit as small as 2Mt, if it is the right flake size and purity, the potential spread is double or even triple your costs to mine and process.
The new pricing category for jumbo flake demonstrates where the industry is going giving out premium prices for the jumbo flake and higher purity products suitable for new industries like lithium ion batteries. 99.9% large flake is close to the purity of synthetic graphite at 99.95% which starts at $7,000 per tonne according to Industrial Metals. There is no price for natural graphite at purities of 99.95%, that is yet to be negotiated. $7,000 per tonne I would assume to be a floor but might not be if 99.95%C natural graphite is suitable to replace material that consumers are paying $20,000 per tonne for. Obviously battery manufacturers see natural graphite as a way to cut cost in producing the batteries over the long run as Tesla batteries current replacement cost is around $30,000 and they want it down to $7,000 in 3 to 5 years. Most of the cost savings can be achieved by mass production and economies of sales, but manufacturers will try to attain reasonable prices for materials and replacign synthetic graphtie with natural graphite if its cheaper and works as well jsut makes sense. There is a huge cost differential between synthetic and natural graphite. In the Tesla’s Roadster’s case, it would bring the cost of 100kg of graphite from $2,000 to $3,000 per battery at current synthetic prices to $700 to $1,000 per battery if the magic number for 99.95%C natural graphite is somewhere between $7,000 and $10,000 per tonne. That is a considerable savings in materials for a battery. At minimum a $1,300 spread
Latest Graphite Prices 2012 Industrial Minerals Graphite Prices per Tonne FCL CIF main European port
99% to 99.9% C, +50 mesh $4,500 $6,000
94% to 97% C, +80 mesh CIF $2,500 $3,000
90% C, +80 mesh $2,000 $2,500
94% to 97% C, +100-80 mesh $2,200 $2,500
90% C, +100-80 mesh $1,500 $2,000
85% to 87% C, +100-80 mesh $1,500 $1,900
94% to 97% C, -100 mesh $2,000 $2,400
90% C, -100 mesh $1,400 $1,800
Amorphous powder 80% to 85C $600 $800
Synthetic 99.95% C2 $7,000 $20,000
MOX Price at posting:
5.7¢ Sentiment: Buy Disclosure: Held
