After the spring festival holidays, the sentiments in China’s graphite electrodes (GE) market continues to remain weak.
According to the market sources, many of the GE enterprises do not have any new orders and are continuing with the previous orders booked at the end of 2018. This has resulted in higher inventory with the electrodes manufacturers, negatively impacting their prices.
On the demand side, the downstream steel market is in the traditional off-season and the operating rate is not very high. The demand for graphite electrodes is also sluggish.
Although some steel mills have started bidding for GE, they are deliberately asking for lowered prices in order to take advantage of the slack in demand. A market source informed us that China’s graphite electrode market has no positive support at present and the market is pessimistic. It is expected that prices will fall in the short term.
The prevailing prices of 450mm UHP grade graphite electrodes is around RMB 34,000 – 36,000/MT (USD 5,000 – 5,300/MT) and for 600mm the same is around RMB 60,000 – 80,000 per tonne (USD 8,900 – 11,900/MT). The price of ordinary power GE of size 300-600mm is around RMB 28,000-35,000/MT (USD 4,160 – 5,200/MT).
In terms of raw materials, needle coke prices remained stable this week. The graphite electrode enterprises in the country are slowly increasing their production post-holidays and thus the needle coke buyers have started showing their eagerness to make purchases.
As of now, Jinzhou Petrochemical oil needle coke offer is RMB 29000 per tonne (USD 4,310/MT) whereas Shandong Yida New Materials Co., Ltd. oil needle offer is RMB 30,000/MT (USD 4,460/MT).
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