Sinyuan in tie-up for graphite products

With many domestic and global businesses allocating resources to produce technologically intensive green products, Ningbo Sinyuan Industrial Material Group, a Zhejiang province-based expanded graphite manufacturer, will supply more new products to its partners to sustain robust growth, said a senior executive.

Numerous opportunities are arising from China's multifaceted drive to further reduce carbon emissions and explore new avenues of growth through hydrogen-powered products, innovative materials, advanced industrial equipment and the development of new energy vehicles, said Chen Bo, CEO of Sinyuan.

In a strategic partnership with Ballard Power Systems Inc, a Canadian company specializing in hydrogen fuel cell products, Sinyuan will provide bipolar plates, a critical component of proton exchange membrane fuel cells, to fulfill Germany's Siemens Mobility GmbH's order for 14 200-kilowatt fuel cell modules from Ballard.

Bipolar plates, made of expanded graphite, have complex flow fields that, when stacked, distribute gas and air, as well as conduct electrical current from one cell to the next.

Delivery of the fuel cell modules began earlier this year, and they will be used in hydrogen-powered trains in the Berlin-Brandenburg region, which are scheduled for service in late 2024. Upon installation, the rail network will become the first hydrogen-powered rail system in Germany, Ballard said.

Due to the cost-effective advantages of Sinyuan's products, Ballard began reducing sourcing from suppliers in the United States after testing and using the Chinese company's products, making Sinyuan its strategic global supplier of bipolar plates.

Eager to create more high value-added products, Chen said that Sinyuan and Ballard established a specialized research and development team to jointly develop the next generation of bipolar plates, aiming to enhance product quality while continuously reducing costs.

Leveraging decades of research and applications of expanded graphite, Sinyuan has built a complete industrial chain from graphite ore powder to bipolar plates. It has achieved numerous innovations in areas such as physical purification, trace oxygenation and other processes. The company achieved sales revenue of 500 million yuan ($68 million) in 2022, with half of this attributed to exports. Sinyuan has business dealings with over a dozen countries worldwide.

Driven by strong market demand and many countries' green transformation campaigns, Sinyuan may see 15 percent year-on-year growth this year in sales of its core products — sealing elements — and much higher growth of its new energy business which includes fuel cells and redox flow batteries.

Apart from deploying more resources to develop overseas markets such as Canada and Singapore, he said Sinyuan and its partner — a Swiss sealing materials manufacturer — will establish a brake pad factory in Ohio, the United States, to better serve its North American clients at the end of this year.

Sinyuan, as a specialized and sophisticated company producing novel products in Zhejiang, has also ventured into the redox flow battery market. In this high-potential market, the company has swiftly established a presence, becoming a supplier of bipolar plates to major domestic and international liquid flow battery manufacturers.