ICC News: Domestic needle coke market continued to maintain at low levels in December, all major operators in the business all halted production awaiting for the reopen in the next year.
Specifically, coal-based needle coke Hongte Chemical saw obstacles in needle coke production for financial reasons. The cooperative work between Anshan Research Institute of Thermo-Energy and Anshan Iron & Steel might drag into the year of 2015. This year, Anshan Research Institute of Thermo-Energy in fact produced 18,000 tons of needle coke, which largely were supplied to Kaifeng Carbon at a price of 6,500 yuan prevailingly. Baosteel Chemical resumed production in mid December with a production target of 2,000 tons, and sales hit 13,000 tons in 2014 at a prevailing price of 5,000 yuan.
On the petroleum-based needle coke side, Jinzhou chemical tentatively halted production this month to conduct maintenance of production line and upgrade equipments.
It is forecast to resume operation after Q1 of 2015.
Presently, prevailing price of needle coke is 6,500-7,000 yuan/mt, and inventory was low.
On the import market, coal-based needle coke was 1,100 USD/mt prevailingly, and the import volume of coal needle coke during Jan-Nov 2014 was 32,000 tons; petroleum needle coke was 1,200 USD/mt prevailingly, and the import value of petroleum needle coke was 16,000 tons.
On the downstream front, domestic graphite electrode market was lingering at the bottom in December in lack of momentum to hike. Although with price of low-sulphur calcined petroleum coke maintaining low and weak, price of graphite electrode is unlikely to go downward in the short term due to the backing of cost.
Near the year-end, payment collection has become the biggest challenge for electrode producers as many enterprises found them short of funds now.
On the downstream side, after the conclusion of Beijing APEC meeting in November, although steelmakers in Hebei resumed production one after another, major steelmakers once again became subject to production limitation as local authorities moved to implement APEC-like blue sky protection plan and right now some small-and medium-sized steelmakers are operating under 30% capacity, with Wu'an posting most severe conditions.
Similar to situation with steel companies, downstream orders at casting enterprises also hit a low point, down by around 50% compared to the same period last year and showing little improvement at the year end. The ideal situation for next year as experts expect would be keeping up with the status of this year or gaining 10-20% growth from this year, while heavy machinery sector posts an excess capacity ratio of two-third.
On the production side, due to weak demand, all major graphite electrode producers saw decline in production output. For instance, one Hunan-based producer cut graphite electrode production by 20-40% and one Jilin-based plant cut it by 10%.
Entering December as northern regions embrace winter, many in Inner Mongolia halted graphite electrode production.
CONTACT US
ICC APP
