There are many greenfield projects that have yet to build a...

There are many greenfield projects that have yet to build a plant and produce flake concentrate. In fact, there has not been a greenfield project transition to a producing operation in more than 20 years.

Plants are expensive to build and a 20KT plant will cost in excess of US$ 40 million.

All natural flake graphite products have to be qualified as every signature is unique and cannot be compared to iron ore off-takes, which can be secured before the ore is every mined. Graphite concentrate has a wide range of purities and mesh sizes and to claim an off-take in graphite is not logical.
Isotropic and anisotropic graphite vary differently in structure with an excellent example comparing microcrystalline graphite powder with secondary synthetic graphite powder with the only similarities being they are both highly crystalline, other than that not the same.
This is why scrape electrodes are ground into micron sizes of 45 to 75 micron and since the base coke is needle coke, performs well in compression moulded bi-polar plates.
Anode grade graphite powders whether natural or synthetic, varying in Lc height and is one major advantage of natural flake anode graphite has lower Lc height (<150 nm) depending on PSD and higher energy density when compressed into a 2 - 3 mm prismatic electrode.