SUPPLY SECURITY
New data from Industrial Minerals Research has revealed that China’s dominance of the world’s graphite industry is starting to spill over into value added products. The report also goes into detail on the extent of the country’s dominance of spherical graphite production.
In 2011, China produced over 90% of the world’s uncoated spherical graphite produced from high quality flakes, research has shown. This adds to its dominance of flake graphite production which is expected to be 66% by the end of 2012.
Producers of lithium-ion batteries rely on the superior spherical graphite, the critical anode material, to produce high performance batteries for mobile energy and electric vehicles.
It is the rise of portable electronics and electric vehicles that will dictate the amounts of spherical graphite needed to sate global demand.
The non-Chinese graphite sector has used spherical graphite as its research...