After rounds of negotiations, the battery anode material producers have successfully nailed down a price hike with leading battery cell manufacturers post the drastic rise in petroleum coke (petcoke) earlier incurred serious losses, OilChem's survey showed.
Taking medium-grade artificial graphite as an example, the market price recorded Yuan 27,500/tonne as of March 20, up nearly 20% from a month ago, according to OilChem's price assessment. And the low-grade artificial graphite also showed a monthly rise of 18% during the same period.
Source: Mysteel OilChem
The current round of price hike mostly happened among medium and low-grade artificial graphite which mainly use petcoke as the raw material, which experienced significant increases in February.
Nevertheless, the low-sulfur petcoke prices have embarked on the downtrend since March, but the battery anode material manufacturers are still digesting the high-priced raw materials purchased in February.
It is expected that China's battery anode materials production will improve in March partly due to the moderate downstream demand, and the successful price hike will likely further encourage the producers to ramp up the production.
Source: Mysteel OilChem
Written by Aggie Hu, huchenying@mysteel.com
Edited by Navy Liu, liuchuanjun@mysteel.com
