Good afternoon. On Friday, a subsidiary of Shandong Xinsheng Minerals, the Chinese company formerly called Shandong Yulong Gold, completed its purchase of 70% of Triton Minerals’ graphite assets in Cabo Delgado, closing a deal that stalled this year in a payment dispute. The A$17m ($11m) sale covers the Ancuabe project and the Cobra Plains concession, buying control from a small Australian company that could never fund the digging. On its own it would be a footnote, but it fits a pattern that is starting to look deliberate.
The same appetite was on show in January, when President Daniel Chapo cut the ribbon on a graphite mine and processing plant at Nipepe, in Niassa, built by DH Mining, part of China’s Jinan Yuxiao group, at a reported cost of between $150m and $200m and a planned 200,000 tonnes a year. Between them, Chinese companies now control a large portfolio of undeveloped graphite deposits in the north along with its biggest new processing plant.
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Chinese control is far from complete, and that is what Mozambique still has to lose. Syrah Resources of Australia owns the far larger Balama mine, rated at about 350,000 tonnes a year, though running below that; a German-owned mine at Ancuabe, part of the AMG group, shipped to Germany for years before being suspended in 2023; and the UK’s Total Graphite holds two undeveloped deposits, at Montepuez and Balama Central.
Graphite matters more than its low profile suggests. It’s the main ingredient in the anodes of the batteries in electric cars and grid storage, and its supply chain is the most concentrated of any critical mineral. China mines about three-quarters of the world’s natural graphite and does around 90% of the processing that turns it into battery material. Western governments have spent years and billions building an alternative, and Mozambique, with some of the best deposits anywhere, is central to that effort.
