Canadian mining company NextSource Materials and a well-known Japanese graphite trading company, Japanese Partner, signed a ten-year constrained off-take agreement. NextSource Materials will purchase 20,000 tons of Molo SuperFlake® graphite each year for battery anodes in electric vehicles.
Japanese Partner is Japan's largest graphite supplier, mainly supplying flake graphite for battery processors and graphite materials for lithium ion battery (LiB) anodes for electric vehicles. The battery anode material supplier currently has a 50% share of Japan's premium graphite anode material market for electric vehicle batteries, and its electric vehicle (EV) customers span the globe.
Currently, most of Japan's flake graphite is supplied to Japanese electric vehicle manufacturers as anode materials for electric vehicle batteries. Japanese Partner has confirmed that NextSource's SuperFlake® graphite concentrate test results are superior to the graphite materials currently used in electric vehicle lithium-ion batteries.
Craig Scherba P. Geo, President and CEO of NextSource, said: "This procurement cooperation is a major achievement for NextSource and is the result of more than 4 years of extensive product testing of SuperFlake® graphite with major Japanese material manufacturers. This cooperation allows NextSource to immediately enter the fast-growing electric vehicle market and emerging energy storage markets such as graphite anode materials. Working with such a mature trading partner, NextSource will become the main battery anode material in the future-high-quality flake graphite and graphite Important supplier of foil. "