thyssenkrupp Materials Trading, an international trading and services company headquartered in Essen, Germany, and Canadian battery materials development company NextSource Materials Inc. have entered into a long-term partnership and signed an off-take agreement for NextSource’s SuperFlake® graphite.
With around 480 locations – 271 of them warehousing locations – in over 40 countries, thyssenkrupp Materials Services is the biggest mill-independent materials distributor & service provider in the western world.
The agreement covers the annual purchase of up to 35kt of graphite concentrate, to be mined at the company's Molo mine in Madagascar in the second quarter of 2022. The term of the agreement is 10 years with an automatic five-year extension. NextSource’s SuperFlake® graphite is claimed to have very high conductivity and, due to its high quality and flake size, is suitable for a wide range of applications, including in the foundry and refractories industries, powder metallurgy, and in the production of lithium-ion batteries.
“The trustful co-operation 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.”
Wolfgang Schnittker, CEO of thyssenkrupp Materials Trading
With this agreement, the raw materials trading experts are NextSource's global sales partner. In the first phase from April 2022, thyssenkrupp Materials Trading will purchase approximately 7,300 metric tons from NextSource. This initial volume will be used by the companies to verify run-of-mill production of SuperFlake® concentrate. Once complete, the annual offtake volume will increase to up to 35,000 tons by 2024.
“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. We are extremely pleased to formalize 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.”
Craig Scherba president and CEO, NextSource.
NextSource Materials Inc. is a battery materials development company based in Toronto, Canada that is intent on becoming a fully integrated, global supplier of critical battery and technology materials needed to power the sustainable energy revolution. The company’s Molo graphite project is one of the largest known and highest-quality graphite deposits and the only project with SuperFlake® graphite. Mine commissioning is expected to begin in April next year, followed by a ramp up to a Phase 1 processing plant capacity of 240kt of ore, producing approximately 17kt of high-quality SuperFlake® graphite concentrate.
“The partnership with NextSource underlines the consistent continuation of our activities to expand our high-quality graphite supply sources outside of China."
Jörg Glebe, Chief Operating Officer of thyssenkrupp Materials Trading
thyssenkrupp Materials Trading's product range includes raw materials such as alloys, non-ferrous metals, minerals, coke, coal and ores, various raw materials for future technologies, metallurgical products such as steel and pipes, pipe accessories, finished steel and stainless steel, as well as trading with new and used industrial equipment, machine tools, spare parts, and structural elements for hydraulic steel engineering and the offshore sector, plus materials and logistics services of all kinds. The range is rounded out by tailored offers including financing and shipment.