Lengthy project development lead times for an alternative graphite and battery anode supply chain to China are likely to subdue the impact on spot prices and short-term global supplies.
Efforts to reduce the dependency on China are making gains in Africa, Scandinavia, Australia and the US, although moving from mining graphite to producing active anode material is a long and expensive process, entrenching China's dominance for the next few years.
Australia's Talga Resources and Syrah Resources are at the forefront of developing fresh sources of active anode material for electric vehicle and energy storage batteries. But commercial production at their projects in northern Sweden and in the US state of Louisiana are still in a development phase.
Talga has confirmed the potential for its Niska expansion project, of 85,000 t/yr of refined and purified graphite and 8,500 t/yr of graphene, to combine with its smaller Vittangi project, with 19,000 t/yr of refined and purified graphite, to produce more than 100,000 t/yr of graphite and graphene products from 2025-26. It claims that combined production from Niska and Vittangi will make it the world's largest natural graphite anode producer and the largest anode producer outside of China.
A scoping study shows that Niska could be a viable standalone project with an initial mine life of 14 years, feeding around 400,000 t/yr through a concentrator before refining. But a challenge for Talga and its partners is the expected development price tag of around $1bn with an extra $200mn contingency.
Europe underpins future demand for graphite and graphene products, according to Talga. Europe is expected to rise to 17pc of total planned global GWh capacity by 2029 compared with 5.4pc of GWh capacity in 2020, making it the fastest growing region for new lithium-ion battery production. Talga expects Europe to require around 595,000 t/yr of coated graphite anode by 2029.
Syrah's output it likely to be on a smaller scale than Talga, although it is on track to be the first active anode material producer outside China.
Syrah already has capacity to produce 5,000 t/yr of unpurified spherical graphite at its Vidalia plant in Louisiana. It is planning to have 10,000 t/yr capacity of active anode material by late 2023 or early 2024, with longer term plans to produce around 40,000 t/yr.
Several other graphite producers are investigating downstream graphite and graphene strategies to add value to ore reserves in countries such as Australia, Madagascar, Tanzania and Mozambique, but will need substantial amounts of capital and time to commercialise these plans.
