Peninsula enters South Korea graphite agreement

Australia-based graphite developer Peninsula Mines has entered into a testing and potential offtake agreement with South Korean lithium-ion battery anode supplier Tera Technos for output from its projects in South Korea.

The initial deal includes a testing programme on graphite concentrate samples from its Gapyeong graphite project and possibly from the Eunha graphite project.

Subject to test results, Tera Technos and Peninsula Mines' wholly-owned subsidiary Korea Graphite will negotiate a co-operation and offtake agreement for the supply of flake graphite concentrate for the production of Tera Technos' proprietary Tera-Series carbon composite anode materials.

"The company will now look to complete spheroidisation and electro-chemical testing in parallel with advancing its key graphite projects towards development and production," managing director Jon Dugdale said.

Tera Technos manufactures and distributes high performance carbon composite anode materials aimed at improving battery capacity, stability and efficiency.

Peninsula Mines has an offtake initial deal with Graphene Korea, one of the country's largest producers of expandable graphite. It also has a binding supply agreement with Canadian-based DNI Metals for 24,000 t/yr of flake graphite from Madagascar for selling on to consumers in South Korea.