It takes 3+ years to complete successful qualifications (few...

It takes 3+ years to complete successful qualifications (few qualify due to a number of issues including chemically, metallurgically, and electrochemistry) to and another 2+ years before any meaningful shipments begin. All sales agreements or contracts are based on commercially produced anode products, not lab or pilot plant production. Also, China is the only country that uses natural graphite CSPG and primary synthetic graphite anode material is the dominate conductive additives for all secondary and primary battery chemistries and formats by battery OEM's around the globe.

There are not offtakes in graphite, as all graphite has to be qualified and any tentative agreement for a potential future plant / operation yet to produce commercial anode products would be considered an MOU or LOI; also, to believe from any third party marketing firm that there will be a shortage of millions of tonnes of graphite is hubris at best as global demand is softening for EV's due to a number of issues; early adaptors have filled the first demand curve metric through government subsidisation otherwise, market forces would make it difficult to meet political narratives for EV's.