[Featured Stock] Senotec, the World's Only Producer of All Ceramic Beads... Increasing Demand from Mining and Secondary Batteries

[Asia Economy Reporter Hyungsoo Park] Senotec is showing strong performance. The news that it has signed a supply contract for ultra-small ceramic beads to a Chinese secondary battery raw material company appears to be influencing its stock price.

As of 9:10 AM on the 7th, Senotec is trading at 2,000 KRW, up 6.1% from the previous day.

The contract amount is 2.77 million USD (approximately 3.6 billion KRW), and the contract period lasts until October 5 of next year. The final customer is Ningxia Baofeng Energy Storage Materials Company.

A Senotec official explained, "The final customer of the contract is a subsidiary of Ningxia Baofeng Energy Group, a listed Chinese energy and chemical company with annual sales of about 30 trillion KRW," adding, "It is a company established through large-scale investment for the secondary battery total package business." He further stated, "Senotec supplies ultra-small ceramic beads for grinding and processing materials used in secondary batteries and ESS batteries."

Ultra-small ceramic beads refer to high-strength ceramic materials in the form of beads with a diameter of less than 1 mm. They are used as a friction medium through rotation in grinding machines. This enables ultra-fine grinding of the target material. By achieving miniaturization and uniformity of cathode materials, anode materials, and separator materials through the grinding process using ultra-small ceramic beads, the efficiency, a core performance of secondary batteries, can be significantly improved.

With the rapid global increase in demand for secondary batteries, solutions to enhance capacity and performance of secondary batteries are gaining attention. By making cathode materials, anode materials, and separator materials smaller and more uniform through the grinding process using ultra-small ceramic beads, the performance of secondary batteries can be stabilized.

Ultra-small ceramic beads with a diameter of 0.1 mm, roughly the thickness of a human hair, have been monopolized in the global market by two Japanese companies due to the high difficulty of manufacturing technology and the resulting entry barriers. Senotec succeeded in domestic production through independent manufacturing techniques after years of in-house research and development based on Korea's top-level ceramic material processing technology. Using the 0.1 mm product, particles of 50 to 100 nm size are produced during material grinding.

The finer the particles of the ground powder, the better the material grinding efficiency and yield. Ultra-small ceramic beads are essential materials in ultra-precision, high value-added industries requiring ultra-fine grinding of raw materials such as secondary batteries, semiconductors, and multilayer ceramic capacitors (MLCC).

Senotec CEO Myunggu Heo predicted, "As the demand for increased capacity, performance, and stability of major product groups in the electrical and electronic fields such as secondary batteries and MLCC grows, requests for supply of ultra-small ceramic beads applied in the process will also increase."

He added, "Senotec is the only company worldwide capable of producing all types of ceramic beads used across various industries," and said, "We will continue efforts to expand market share overseas based on advanced technology and excellent quality."

Earlier, Senotec signed a ceramic bead supply contract worth 15 million USD with a large Australian mining company last month. Senotec will supply 2,000 tons of ceramic beads to the customer over the next three years. Depending on the customer's decisions, there is potential for increased supply volume and additional contract extensions.