It should also be noted that the low quality consistency of spherical graphite in china has to do with costs of production. That is why I emphasized :
"quality at reasonable cost". In other words, the chinese could very well choose to filter/screen for only high quality products, but then how are they gonna sell the "low quality spherical graphite" screened ? It would be extremely difficult to sell and most probably it would be considered as junk/waste product.
Lets say a processing plant like the subsequent one produces (or uses as feedstock for spherical) a purified graphite product at a purity varying from 99.50% (not battery grade) up to 99.95% (battery grade). What should be considered as a better choice for the chinese producer :
1- sell everything as a mix product at say 2500$ per tonne and let the koreans/japanese do the filtering/screening themselves.
2- screen and sell only the 99.90%+ stuff, but at what price ? and what he will do with the lower purity graphite?
What i want to say is that the varying low quality chinese graphite raw feedstock (mostly 88%-94% small-medium flakes purity from multiple small mines) put a limit in terms of costs of production of high quality spherical graphite. The chinese have indeed a comparative advantage producing and selling low quality graphite, but not so IMO for high quality graphite (low yields, too much waste to achieve high quality consistency) . And that is the opportunity for junior graphite miners who want to succeed in the fields : focus on quality, compete on quality.
Andrew Miller@amiller_bmi
Privilege to meet some of the worlds leading spherical
#graphite producers this week in Shandong.
#Battery demand growing fast
