Australia’s Renascor signs graphite supply deal with Mitsubishi Chemical

Australia’s Renascor Resources said on Wednesday it signed an agreement with Japanese anode material manufacturer Mitsubishi Chemical to supply graphite products from its Siviour graphite and battery anode material (BAM) project.

Under the agreement, the parties agreed to undertake further validation testwork on Renascor’s graphite products and advance talks to determine potential supply terms and a commercial partnership, Renascor said in a statement.

The deal comes amid Tokyo’s push for investments into mines of minerals used in batteries as it reinforces alliances with resource-rich countries such as Australia, underscoring a global rush towards decarbonization.

Renascor is currently in advanced stages of an updated study for the BAM facility in South Australia to assess an increase in purified spherical graphite production capacity.

The Australian miner already has non-binding offtake deals to supply processed graphite to South Korea’s Posco, China’s Shanxi Minguang New Material Technology and Japan’s Hanwa.

(By Himanshi Akhand; Editing by Subhranshu Sahu and Sherry Jacob-Phillips)