Industrial materials company Thyssenkrupp Materials Trading and Canadian battery materials development company NextSource Materials have entered into a long-term partnership to supply graphite for foundries and battery production.

The parties also signed a ten-year offtake agreement for NextSource’s SuperFlake graphite.

With this agreement, Thyssenkrupp Materials Trading is NextSource's global sales partner. During the first phase from April 2022, Thyssenkrupp Materials Trading will buy about 7 300 t of graphite from NextSource.

This initial volume will be used by the companies to verify run-of-mill production of SuperFlake concentrate. The offtake volume will increase to up to 35 000 t/y by 2024.

The agreement covers the offtake of up to 35 000 t/y of the graphite concentrate, to be mined at NextSource's Molo mine, in Madagascar, from the second quarter of 2022.

NextSource’s SuperFlake graphite has very high conductivity and, owing to its high quality and flake size, is suitable for a range of applications, including in the foundry and refractories industries, powder metallurgy and in the production of lithium-ion batteries.

“The cooperation with NextSource enables us to further expand our strong presence in the international foundry and refractories industry. It is our unique selling point to competitively serve various industries but especially emerging industries and their highly specified requirements,” says Thyssenkrupp Materials Trading CEO Wolfgang Schnittker.

“This executed offtake agreement for the sale of our SuperFlake graphite was the culmination of a multi-year process and is yet another significant milestone in the company’s strategy in becoming a graphite producer of consequence,” adds NextSource president and CEO Craig Scherba.

“We are extremely pleased to formalise this partnership with Thyssenkrupp given their expertise, scale, and extensive global distribution network. We look forward to expanding our relationship together as we organically expand our graphite market share over the years to come.”

“The partnership with NextSource underlines the consistent continuation of our activities to expand our high-quality graphite supply sources outside of China. In particular, the distribution range of the graphite flakes enables us to supply our customers even more in accordance with their needs and to support them in their long-term growth plans,” says Thyssenkrupp Materials Trading COO Jörg Glebe.