The latest salvo in the global commodities trade war has handed a boost to graphite share prices.
The Chinese government will restrict the export of graphite from December of this year.
Graphite is used in all current battery technologies as the anode material, alongside lithium and other battery metals for the cathode. The price reporting agency Fastmarkets forecasts battery graphite demand to reach 4Mt by 2033, four times its current level.
“Graphite prices are likely to rise, but China’s latest move will also intensify the need to find alternative sources of this key battery material and push production out of China,” Ewa Manthay, Commodities Strategist at ING, said.
Tirupati Graphite PLC (LON:TGR) is a fully integrated specialist graphite and graphene producer, with operations in Madagascar and India. The Company is delivering on this strategy by being fully integrated from mine to graphene. Its global multi-location operations include primary mining and processing in Madagascar, hi-tech graphite processing in India to produce specialty graphite, and a state-of-art graphene and technology R&D center to be established in India.