RE: Rude not to14 Nov 2022 15:55
I know pow have a lot on there plate at the moment. But I wonder if Paul has looked at Graphite to,add into the portfolio. As it looks increasingly likely that Graphite will become a critical part in the battery industry.
Graphite – the new Lithium?
There has been plenty of commentary on the EV battery sector and associated sectors such as Energy Storage. Electrification seems to be the future for now and the key minerals that are required are rapidly coming into focus.
So far a lot of the noise has been around lithium and rightly so. Car manufacturers specifically have been fretting about sourcing the mineral with the likes of Elon Musk muting buying mining companies to secure supply! Lithium prices have exploded due to the anxiety around sourcing it but there are many other minerals that are critical (at least for the foreseeable) in creating batteries.
One that is often overlooked is graphite which in actual fact makes up c.50% of the battery being the anode part of the battery. All lithium-ion battery combinations require graphite in the anode. In fact Elon Musk was famed for saying that EV batteries should be called ‘nickel-graphite’ batteries.
You may be surprised to know that today the majority of graphite demand is not batteries but other uses such as expandables, flame ******ants, thermal sheets the list goes on. However as the world adopts electric cars and other battery based products (my golf electric trolly has one!), batteries are set to become the main driver for graphite demand and by some margin! This will lead to a deficit which is starting to emerge and graphite basket prices have already started creeping up.
Another consideration is that synthetic graphite is manufactured directly in China, however the process is carbon intensive and dirty which means that we will see more natural flake graphite being required to then up-scale to spherical graphite required by batteries to lower the carbon intensity.
What that means is that more quality natural flake graphite projects around the world will be required to feed into the impending demand up-lift with a lower carbon intensity. This is where the likes of Blencowe are well positioned.
A ‘bun fight’ for important minerals such as graphite could ensue given the supply/demand dynamic, its no co-incidence graphite now appears on the US and Europes critical minerals lists
Maybe cut loose one or two of the less important ones and add a Graphite product into the mix. Just thinking on my part
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