Graphite: China continues with record levels of natural graphite imports

China continues to increase its imports of natural graphite to meet rising domestic demand from the lithium-ion battery sector, with monthly imports increasing by 2,000% since the end of 2017 (before which they were less than 1ktpy) to exceed 22kt in May 2019. These figures exclude the import of very low value, crude material from North Korea. Almost all of the new shipments have come from Mozambique and Madagascar, where a large amount of new supply is becoming available.

Roskill View

China has significant resources of battery-grade graphite, however, many of the deposits being exploited are getting deeper and more expensive to mine. Coupled with rising environmental costs and other costs of production, China is looking increasingly to foreign sources of supply, in particular, those in Africa. 

Syrah Resources began production at its large-scale Balama flake graphite project in Mozambique in late 2017 and ramped up to more than 104kt of production in 2018; the vast majority of its shipments have been destined for the Chinese battery industry.

In Madagascar, several companies are looking to ramp-up production of flake graphite including the long-term producer Établissements Gallois and companies with newly re-developed projects such as Bass Metals of Australia (Graphmada) and Tirupati Group of India (Sahamamy). Madagascar is known for production of very large size flake graphite, a size fraction for which China has relatively limited resources, and which has specialist use in the growing expandable/expanded graphite sector.

yes i know its flake,but.....

inca.