Posted on 17 Jan 2024
China has approved exports of spherical graphite to Posco Future M, steel giant Posco’s refractories and basic industrial materials subsidiary and South Korea’s only producer with both anode and cathode capacities, according to South Korean newspaper Korea Joongang Daily.
Posco Future M did not respond to Kallanish's request for comment.
Chinese media channels, including Global Times, also reported the news citing South Korean newspapers.
The approval is expected to help Posco Future M in achieving its anode material production expansion targets. The company plans to ramp up anode material annual production capacity to 370,000 tonnes by 2030 from the planned 93,000 t for 2024, Kallanish understands.
Korea Joongang Daily cited a source of Posco Future M as saying: “China now examines the exports one by one to offer approval. It’s the first time we gained the approval from China since it announced curb in early December.”
The source adds the Chinese government also approved exporting finished graphite anode materials to the three South Korean power battery giants: LG Energy Solution, SK Innovation and Samsung SDI.
“Although the Chinese government has strengthened export controls on graphite items, it has approved a series of graphite export licences. In general, South Korean companies have not encountered any special problems in the process of importing graphite from China,” an unnamed supply chain source is quoted as saying by the Yonhap News Agency.
At the same time, South Korea is cautious about the impacts of the trade tensions between China and the US, as well as its dependency on Chinese resources, including graphite.
In 2021, Posco Future M, formerly Posco Chemical, acquired a 13% stake in Chinese graphite processor Qingdao Zhongshuo New Energy Technology, a subsidiary of Haida – a major graphite producer in China. The investment helped Posco secure the supply of the spherical graphite to meet its anode production needs from 2022 onwards, a statement at the time said.
Source:Kallanish
