ICC News: Needle coke price was stable overall in April. Coal-based needle coke production at Kaifeng Carbon Anshan New Materials was suspended for maintenance this month; as its products are mostly supplied for internal use, sales prices are prevailingly at 4,000 yuan/mt, higher than the average price on the market.
Jinzhou Petrochemical currently is undergoing maintenance and is expected to resume operation in mid-May; its prevailing prices remain at 3600-3800 yuan/ton; Shanghai Baosteel Chemical's coal needle coke production was also suspended for maintenance this week; according to head of the company, it plans to restore production in June; it now has around 2000 tons of stocks and the market price is 3400 yuan/ton.
Stimulated by continued attraction of lithium battery industry and recovering PV sector, downstream clients making purchases now are mostly in anode materials and speical carbon businesses.
C-Chem (Jiangsu) Company's 60kt needle coke project has started pilot production. Its production for April is about 1,500 tons, which has been provided to electrode plants for trial use. Official market price has not yet been released. On the import side, import prices for coal-based needle coke are $500/ton.
As for petroleum needle coke, import prices are $550 from JX Nippon Oil and Energy, $600 from Japan's Petrocokes Ltd, and $550-600 from Philips 66.
Graphite electrode prices for new orders in April were on the drop.
According to information compiled by ICC News, as steel prices have been continually recovering after the Chinese New Year and even skyrocketing since April, steelworks generally have more willingness to restore production. However, due to earlier effort of de-capacity, steel market is still running at low capacity, which restricts the support for the demand for graphite electrode. Although, going forward its demand for electrode will increase. Hence, there are more new orders getting signed in mid- and late April than before. In the meanwhile, electrode manufactures are taking the chance to digest inventory and are willing to make concession on the price.
The operation ratio of silicon metal sector continues to go up, although its price has stopped rising. Given the exaggerated element to the earlier aggressive rise in price, silicon plants mostly hold prudent view. Hence, the production of RP graphite electrode is still limited.
This month graphite electrode production ran rather smoothly. Fangda Carbon's graphite electrode production for April is expected at 8,500-8,600 tons, an increase of 200 tons from March. Sales in April continued to improve, although according to some, prices for new orders have dipped a bit.
Jilin Carbon cut its existing capacity by half in 2016, which now is 50,000 tons one year. In March, its graphite electrode output is 3,000 tons, and the figure increased to 4,500 tons in April. If nothing changes, the company expects an average monthly output of 4,500 tons from April to October.
Kaifeng Carbon registered 6000 tons in graphite electrode production in the first quarter, with an average of 2,000 tons each month. There wasn't much change in production this month as it was at normal pace.
As of now, prevailing prices for domestic 300-600 mm graphite electrode are as follows: HP product is 9,000-11,000 yuan/ton, and UHP product is 12,000-16,000 yuan/ton.
CONTACT US
ICC APP
