Tanzania nears graphite pacts as battery makers bypass China

Tanzanian Finance Minister Khamis Mussa Omar said Oct. 14 that negotiations on two critical mineral agreements covering graphite reached their final stage, accelerating Western-aligned battery supply chains seeking alternatives to Chinese anode material.

China refines more than 90% of global battery-grade spherical graphite and makes over 70% of synthetic anodes. That processing concentration leaves cell makers vulnerable to supply disruptions under Chinese export licensing rules.

Automakers face strict compliance deadlines under the US Inflation Reduction Act and the European Union Critical Raw Materials Act. Both statutes penalize batteries containing mineral inputs processed by Chinese entities starting in 2025 and 2026.

The pending Tanzanian agreements cover commercial terms for mineral assets that include the Mahenge deposit. Mahenge holds an estimated 6 million metric tons of natural flake graphite reserves, ranking among the largest undeveloped graphite deposits in the world.

South Korea's POSCO Group invested $40 million in September 2024 to acquire a 19.9% equity stake in Australia's Black Rock Mining, which develops Mahenge. The group broke ground on the mine on Oct. 9, 2025.

Under that equity agreement, POSCO International secured rights to receive 60,000 metric tons of natural graphite concentrate annually for 25 years. Those commercial shipments are scheduled to commence in 2028.

A consortium of African development lenders provided $260 million in project debt and bank guarantees to finance Mahenge. The lending group includes the Development Bank of Southern Africa, the Industrial Development Corporation of South Africa and CRDB Bank of Tanzania.

African mining jurisdictions are simultaneously moving to restrict raw mineral exports. Delegates gathered at the Africa Mining Week conference in Cape Town, South Africa, between Oct. 14 and Oct. 16, 2026.

Speakers at the conference evaluated the United Nations Country Support Mechanism for Critical Energy Transition Minerals. The mechanism assists Madagascar, Guinea, Nigeria, Zambia and Zimbabwe in developing domestic processing facilities rather than exporting raw rock.

Downstream cell manufacturers are restructuring raw material flows to maintain access to Western vehicle programs. Chinese battery manufacturer Contemporary Amperex Technology opened procurement talks with South Korea's POSCO Future M on Oct. 13, 2026.

Contemporary Amperex Technology is evaluating anode active material samples derived from African natural graphite flake. The qualification testing seeks to satisfy US rules governing Prohibited Foreign Entities and Foreign Entities of Concern.

POSCO Future M disclosed a 1.149 trillion won ($840 million) long-term synthetic graphite supply contract with an unnamed global automaker on March 16, 2026. That off-take contract runs from Oct. 1, 2027 through Sept. 30, 2032.

Replicating Chinese refining assets outside China presents severe cost and environmental hurdles. Natural flake graphite must be converted into spherical graphite — the rounded, purified particles used to construct negative battery terminals — before cell assembly.

Chinese producers achieve low operating expenses by running energy-intensive graphitization furnaces on regional coal power. Most spherical graphite refining facilities in China also rely on hydrofluoric acid leaching to achieve the 99.95% purity threshold required for batteries.

Permitting equivalent chemical acid purification plants in Western and allied jurisdictions involves lengthy environmental reviews and higher capital expenditures. Operating costs for non-Chinese anode plants run an estimated 20% to 30% above Chinese baseline prices.

South Korea classified graphite among 26 national priority management resources on Sept. 23, 2026. The Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy detailed the strategic inventory target in its First Basic Plan for National Resource Security.

South Korean financial regulators approved a 250 billion won ($183 million) low-interest loan on May 4, 2026 for FutureGraph, a subsidiary of POSCO. The policy capital supports construction of a spherical graphite processing plant in the Saemangeum industrial complex.

The Ministry of Economy and Finance disbursed the facility funding through the National Growth Fund. The Saemangeum facility will process imported natural flake graphite into battery-ready coated spherical active material.

The Tanzanian finance ministry did not disclose the commercial terms or the names of the private partners for the two pending mineral contracts.

China's Ministry of Commerce has not published new graphite export control notices as of Oct. 14, leaving existing dual-use export licensing procedures in place.

The Africa Mining Week summit concludes in Cape Town on Oct. 16, 2026, while commercial shipments from the Mahenge mine begin in 2028.