SYR future - Spherical, and Bright!, page-5

IMO these costs are underestimated and unrealistic :

First of all, there is no way the Chinese producers are making 100%+ margin on spherical graphite for this long period (iphone margins only 50%), otherwise, competitors would have knocked on their doors long time ago. there arent many businesses with these kinds of margins to invest in.

Secondly, when you sphereodize the graphite (transforming the flakes into spheres) you loose some 40% of the flakes if not more (60% yield), this alone would ensure that costs should be much higher than 1500 us$/t.

Third, while purifying the 94%- 96% purity graphite to 99.00% purity is expensive (chemical acid purification), getting the graphite to 3N purity (99.90%) and then to battery grade almost 4N (99.95%) purity requires some high energy consumption thermal purification techniques (2700° Celsius ovens) which should be very expensive. No way total cost of producing battery grade spherical graphite is 1500 US$/t.

If syrah can produce enough quantity of 98% purity graphite this would help reduce costs of purification, but then again, the biggest costs are in the step of going from 99.00% to 99.95%, so not sure if that would help them compete with the Chinese who are starting with 94% purity. Time will tell. Moreover, the Chinese would be buying the 98% syrah stuff too....