The biggest risk for syrah is synthetic VS natural. Most tier1...

The biggest risk for syrah is synthetic VS natural. Most tier1 battery makers use mostly synthetic due to homogeneity and order of its crystal structure giving it an edge over natural in terms of battery lifetime and degradation (important for EVs). The idea now is to use a mixture anode synthetic + natural to get the benefits of both (more energy density for natural and cheaper + more lifetime and higher charging rates without degradation for synthetic).

The biggest risk for syrah is that we dont know if battery makers will pursue this path and not simply continue using synthetic. Recently NVX won in the usa a 500 tonnes contract to supply samsung with their puregraohite anode which is. Natural + synthetic. imo that is a good sign for syrah that natural is starting to be accepted by tier1 battery manufacturers such as samsung.

synthetic uses as feedstock high purity petroleum coke sold at 2400 us$ per tonne. The processing required to further engineer and purify this petroleum coke into battery grade synthetic is an expensive and complex process bringing total cost to at least 9000 us$ per tonne.

On the other hand the feedstock for natural graphite anodes is natural spherical graphite sold also at 2400 us$ per tonne but already at 99.95% carbon purity already sphereonized and micronized to 20 microns. Not much needed for its processing into anodes just coating ! Bringing total cost to 5000 us$ per tonne a great cost advantage for natural.

The holy grail of natural graphite anodes is better coating to catch up with the perfirmqnce advantage of the homogenous ordered crystals synthetic. If i were syrah management that is where i would put my R&D money.

hope that helped,