Roskill view: The international minerals processor Imerys announced the acquisition of Japan’s Nippon Power Graphite (NPG) last week, in a move that expands its business into lithium-ion battery anode material manufacture and gives it ownership of NPG’s patented chemical vapour deposition (CVD) coating process. Imerys is a major producer of both natural and synthetic graphite through its subsidiary Imerys Graphite & Carbon. It manufactures primary synthetic graphite at Bodio in Switzerland, which is also the location of Imerys Graphite & Carbon’s headquarters. It mines and processes natural graphite in Canada and has several other graphite processing plants across China and Japan.
The NPG acquisition will increase Imerys’ presence in Asia and move the company further downstream into higher-value anode material. NPG’s facilities will continue to supply mainly Asian markets and Imerys hopes to target the electric vehicle supply chain. Consumption of electric vehicles is forecast to grow rapidly over the next two decades, which will underpin rapid demand growth for both natural and synthetic graphite in lithium-ion battery anode materials. BP’s recently released 2017 Energy Outlook forecasts the number of electric cars worldwide to rise from 1.2M in 2015 to around 100M in 2035 (representing 6% of all cars).
This acquisition is the most recent in an emerging trend for industry consolidation in the graphite to battery supply chain. In October 2016, the Japanese anode material manufacturer Showa Denko acquired SGL carbon’s synthetic graphite business. Meanwhile, in China, the major anode manufacture Shenzhen BTR New Energy Material controls increasing amounts of graphite flake production. In the ROW, companies with natural flake graphite development projects scramble to convert their graphite to spherical graphite with the right specifications for use in batteries.
