What's the Status of Graphite Electrode Projects in China’s Inner Mongolia Province?

China's Inner Mongolia province has the highest investments with regards to upcoming GE capacities

The upsurge of the graphite electrode (GE) prices in China since 2017 has prompted a wave of investment in the country’s GE market. While the new capacities are being added majorly in China’s five provinces that includes Inner Mongolia, Shanxi, Liaoning, Gansu and Henan, the Inner Mongolia province, in particular, is the top attraction for carbon investment drawing an investment for over 270,000 tonnes of new capacities.

Inner Mongolia is the preferred destination for GE investment because of its preferential investment policies and cheap electricity tariffs. Now with the year-end approaching, the following table shows the progress statistics of GE projects in the province:

It can be seen from the table above (which includes five major GE projects in Inner Mongolia) that although high investments are being made in Inner Mongolia, the GE projects are not completed at the speed as expected and as winter heating season has started, construction of many projects have been stopped. These projects are expected to resume their construction work in March and April next year which means that the actual GE production of these plants will start only in the second half of 2019.

In 2017, China produced about 590,000 tonnes of graphite electrodes and based on the survey by China’s IC Carbon of 62 domestic GE manufacturers, country’s electrodes production is expected to reach about 948,000 tonnes in 2018 and about 1.35 MnT by 2020.

According to the survey by IC Carbon, China graphite electrode capacity which was 1.22 MnT in 2017 is expected to touch 1.30 MnT in 2018, 1.80 MnT in 2019 and 2.12 MnT in 2020, an increase of 88,000 tonnes in 2018, 50,000 tonnes in 2019 and 32,000 tonnes in 2020.

source: SteelMint