RNU have an off-take to supply POSCO with some PSG for their existing ~60kt plant. It all comes from China atm. POSCO turn it into AAM. The AAM made with PSG from RNU will be IRA qualified while the rest from China will be used in EV's for the local market. POSCO are currently building a AAM plant which includes manufacturing SPG which is why they have off-takes with SYR and BKT for flake graphite.
NMG just started building their natural 43kt AAM plant in Canada. “We have a lot of financial institutions lined up to do the debt and the equity alongside the off takers and then 30 months of construction, and mid 2027 we will be starting to ship product to those customers,” he said.
https://www.mining.com/nouveau-monde-graphite-breaks-ground-at-phase-three-concentrator-plant-in-quebec/Why would you sell SYR when they start delivery to Tesla in 3-5 months creating a second and permanent revenue stream.
I don't believe a word the Chinese are saying. They are playing geopolitics in a last desperate attempt to control the LiB market through graphite. In the last 18 months the west has finally gotten off the dime and started building/planning mines and natural and synthetic AAM plants which require financing. Low and behold, at the same time Chinese graphite prices plummet making those mines and plants look uneconomical to loan money to, panic shareholders to sell making CR's difficult. Plus they put restrictions on graphite exports in the middle of a massive internal capacity over supply crisis.
This time last year, Chinese sources were telling us most graphite companies both natural and synthetic were losing money at current prices and now they have dropped a further 20%. They were also saying utilisation rates of all those synthetic AAM plants they built were 30% because of low demand. However, now they are saying from the Fastmarkets article "Orders for anodes increased on a monthly basis in March, resulting in a rebound in anode production, with the top producers said to [be operating at] a production rate of more than 80%, while some small- and medium-sized ones were operating at around 50% or lower".
Not be be out done, they were saying hardly any natural was being used in the anode in 2023. However, they are saying "China’s total flake graphite capacity was up by 0.6 million tonnes to 1.8 million tonnes in 2023, with Heilongjiang province accounting for 92% of that total,” a second speaker at the event said. Heilongjiang province primarily produces fines flake. With near zero demand for fines flake apparently they more than tripled mining capacity of fine flake in 2023 after quadrupling synthetic capacity in 2022. We know LiB battery manufacturing increased 45% in GWh last year.
The number don't add up. If the top synthetic producers are now at more than 80% production capacity, what are they doing with all that graphite? Why are they more than tripling their fines flake mining capacity if natural AAM is dead. Yet, no company is going broke with these massive capital outlays for natural and synthetic the year before and the cost of producing all this synthetic in a supposedly low price and demand environment.
https://www.fastmarkets.com/insights/natural-graphite-under-pressure-from-synthetics-amid-oversupply-slow-trade-flows/No wonder the EU is conducting an EV supply chain subsidy review on China and the US are thinking about reapplying tariffs on graphite.
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