Agreed synthetic is in trouble for the reasons you mention. It looks like natural processed to LIB specs will do the job and for less. In the short term while supply/demand is rebalancing the natural will be sold at a discount to synthetic as market share shifts. How long that lasts no one know. However, once supply/demand stabilizes in a normal industrial mineral pattern prices will be squeezed. The key to success will be having a product cost below the marginal producer cost when the market is in balance. There are to many pieces of the puzzle missing to know what those prices will be long term.

My reason for being in ZEN is that everything points to us having lower final product costs (less processing, less material loss, etc) for the specific markets we are going to target which should bode well for us competitively. The best scenario for the graphite market is to have demand exceed long term supply so that pricing will be driven by the alternative which is still high price synthetic.
... Been There