Hi nasabear,
The time difference always leaves me a bit out of sync on replying.
Looking historically at the Chinese and their business dealings, I have always been cautious of their deals. I've dug deep with Triton's yxgc offtake and I am actually ok with this private company. Initially my searching and networking bought back incorrect information about them, but I soon got to fact that I was pleased with.
The whole Chinese Grab is real to me. There is merit imo to target end users/manufacturers direct on all variants of traditional, growth and new markets. This is why I believe the expandable side of the market was/is a great play by Triton and its management.
I do expect management to be strengthened as previously suggested.
I'm not particularly a fan of the larger sell to a distributer kind of deals unless their end users/clients are clearly staked and marked. There is also clearly some hedging being played.
One thing I'm looking out for is the Chinese actually setting up shop outside of China. We are seeing movements out of China in steel (hebei) and other industries.
If Natural Graphite is to play a larger percentage of existing and growing Spherical Battery use then we need to possibly see some more western involvement in this speciality processing as simply today their is not enough manufacturing facilities to fulfil the growth and void that is coming.
Obviously China are also going to step up their existing spherical plant outputs and utilise feedstock from these Ann'd African off takes. This is something that imo I believe Tritons Nicanda offtake may play a part in providing feedstock for, obviously amongst other end uses.
Your purity questions I'm not quite understanding your emphasis? On Tons offtakes, purity within its concentrate has not been set particularly high and obviously the larger bulk uses are not for extremely high purity graphite. It does help that tons concentrate from both Nicanda and Ancuabe suggest simple and generally minimal processing to upgrade to very high purity concentrate, something an offtaker would maybe do themselves In their varying value adding processes/processing.
I do eagerly await further information that may be delivered to us on Tons most recent offtake/funding agreement and their connections/intentions to raw material supply within Shenzhen and China as a whole.
I think Brad is in or off to Japan very soon. I do believe the Japanese may have an intention to open up a new supply route and I anticipate some potential Graphite news coming from here soon enough. The Japanese are notoriously slow though and like to build strong robust relationships prior to agreements being made.
Cheers
Pauldola
(20min delay)