The US government recently released the final rules for clean energy vehicles under the Inflation Reduction Act, which gives automakers flexibility in sourcing certain battery minerals with an additional two-year buffer period for electric vehicle tax credits for certain important trace minerals from China, such as graphite and other hard-to-trace materials, according to a post from the Reuters.
While China produces 60% of global natural graphite and 69% of world's artificial graphite, the graphite resource reserves and production of the United States and its free trade countries accounted for only 1% of the world's total respectively in 2021.
Currently, the battery cell manufacturers in South Korea and Japan use mainly natural graphite, and 97% of South Korea's natural graphite imports come from China.
Source: Mysteel
In this case, the overseas projects have been accelerating the progress with a planned capacity of around 392,000 tonnes/year. Among them, 76.53% of the planned capacities are in Europe and the US, and 20.41% in Southeast Asia.
And the proportion of artificial graphite has been rising year by year, which registered 75% by 2023. The prices of artificial graphite, on the other hand, have been falling, especially in 2023 when the demand growth in the power battery sector started to slow, leading to palpable oversupply and intensive competitions.
Source: Mysteel
Written by Aggie Hu, huchenying@mysteel.com