According to the market sources, Inner Mongolia’s Dongfu New Energy Materials Co. has recently signed an agreement with the Ordos city’s Municipal government to invest in the construction of new energy materials and supporting projects in the Etuoke Economic Development Zone (Qipanjing Park) in Inner Mongolia. The total investment of the project is about 12.4 billion yuan.
This project is set to have needle coke plant with a capacity of 20,000 tonnes, 50,000 tonne of ultra-high power graphite electrode, 200,000 tonne of negative electrode material, 200,000 tonne of activated carbon and 400,000 tonne of coal tar. The project will be constructed in two phases. The first phase of the project is planned to be completed and put into operation by the end of 2020.
Needle coke which is a scarce material is used in graphite electrodes and lithium-ion battery industry. With the increased demand for GE in last two years coupled with significant growth in electric vehicles industry, the demand for needle coke has also surged significantly. At present, although the market size of the domestic needle coke industry is not large in China, the production capacity is growing rapidly. According to market research, China’s needle coke has an additional capacity of 270,000 tonne in 2018. It is expected to reach 0.75 and 1.1 MnT in 2019 and 2020 respectively.
On 12 Sep’19, the 40,000 tonne coal-based needle coke project of Angang Steel was officially completed and put into production, marking the third set of needles transformed by Sinosteel Thermal Energy Institute. This also shows that China is trying to reduce its dependency on the imported material for the production of ultra-high power electrodes and lithium-ion battery. The current prices of needle coke in China’s domestic market have remained more or less stable over past one month and are heard to be in the range of RMB 18,000 – 20,000/MT (USD 2,500 – 2,800/MT).
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