NEEDLE COKE MARKET ANALYSIS

Market Challenges And Opportunities

Global Needle Coke Market Drivers:

Growing demand for lithium ion batteries to propel market growth

Lithium ion batteries are widely used in electric vehicles including plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs), hybrid electric vehicles (HEVs), and all-electric vehicles (EVs). Increasing penetration of electric vehicle will favor the market growth. According to the International Energy Agency, electric car sales reached a record high in 2021, despite supply chain bottlenecks and the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic. Compared with 2020, sales nearly doubled to 6.6 million (a sales share of nearly 9%), bringing the total number of electric cars on the road to 16.5 million.

Growing consumption of steel craps to augment market growth

According to International Trade Administration, in 2019, essential and optional steel makers utilized around 32 million metric lots of ferrous scrap, an increment of 11.4 per cent over the earlier year. Almost 25 million metric tons were obtained through the local scrap vendors and the rest 7 million metric tons were imported from China, the US, UAE, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, and different business sectors to India.

Global Needle Coke Market Opportunities:

Increasing focus on expanding production capacity of graphite is expected to serve major growth opportunities. For instance, in August 2020, Epsilon Carbon commissioned a manufacturing facility in Karnataka to produce graphite anode electrodes for producing lithium-ion batteries. The company is likely to produce 5,000 tons of anode material annually. It also plans to triple this capacity to 15,000 tons in 2021 and to 50,000 tons per annum by 2025.

Global Needle Coke Market Restraints:

Strict environmental regulation to hinder market growth

For instance, recently China’s strict environmental regulation has tightened the screws on polluting industrial plants, nearly 30 percent of its graphite electrode production capacity has been shut and some provinces have restricted output.

Fluctuating price of raw material

The raw material used in manufacturing of needle coke is highly subjected to the volatility in price due to fluctuating price of crude oil. Hence, fluctuating price of raw material and product is expected to restrict the market growth.