| ISSUE 017 · MATERIALS, CAPACITY, CONVERSION | |
| Battery plants are announced in gigawatt hours, and the announcements get counted. The graphite powder inside their anodes gets counted far less. Between January 2022 and June 2025, American producers sold none of it commercially apart from very small quantities in 2022, according to the US International Trade Commission’s March 2026 report. | |
| Active anode material is graphite of at least 90 percent carbon, typically milled below 80 microns, coated or uncoated, under the scope Commerce published on 17 February 2026. It goes into cells for electric vehicles and grid storage; the commission’s record also lists military electronic products, and one purchaser named drones. One layer up, the US Geological Survey records mined natural graphite in brake linings, lubricants, refractories, steelmaking and some defence-related components. | |
| The USGS Mineral Commodity Summaries of February 2026 record no US natural graphite mine production in 2025, flake last mined in Texas in 1979, net import reliance of 100 percent, and no government stockpile. China produced an estimated 82 percent of world natural graphite that year. At the anode layer, US imports in the first eight months of 2025 were 43,400 tons, 55 percent of them from China, per the same summary. | |
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| PLATE · A BRITISH TEXTILE DYEHOUSE, 1915 TO 1920 |
| Britain went to war in 1914 making about 2,000 tons of synthetic dye a year against 18,000 tons imported, with nearly nine-tenths of its supply coming from Germany, according to figures given in the House of Lords on 21 December 1920. Stocks ran out early. The intermediates behind the dyes were also needed for explosives, and the works that made them were drawn into that production. |
| In July 1915 the government formed British Dyes Ltd on the purchase of Read Holliday and Sons, lending it money at 4 percent with dividends capped at 6 percent. British output reached 17,500 tons in 1918, with imports down to 2,000, the same debate records. The Dyestuffs (Import Regulation) Act, given royal assent on 23 December 1920, barred dye imports for ten years except under Board of Trade licence. |
| Parliament faced an industry five years old, a product peers in the debate said lacked the permanence of German dyes, and a German competitor back in the market. It answered with a licensing committee and a ten-year clock. US trade law addresses the same situation under a clause called material retardation, which asks whether imports are holding back an industry that is not yet established. |
| PLATE · ACTIVE ANODE MATERIAL PLANT, VIDALIA, LOUISIANA | |||
| Syrah Technologies’ plant at Vidalia, Louisiana began commercial production of active anode material in February 2024 and has run at reduced output since September 2024, the commission record states. Tesla’s 2021 offtake covers 80 percent of projected output, subject to final qualification. | |||
| Commerce’s final determination of 17 February 2026 set a countervailing duty rate of 66.86 percent for all other Chinese exporters. On 12 March 2026 the commission voted two to one that imports had not materially retarded an industry it found not yet established, and no order issued. Its report found that only Syrah approached commercial scale and that no American producer had completed a battery maker’s qualification. | |||
| The five petitioners were Anovion of Sanborn, New York; Syrah of Vidalia, Louisiana; Novonix of Chattanooga, Tennessee; Epsilon Advanced Materials of Leland, North Carolina; and SKI US of Marietta, Georgia. | |||
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| Every supply figure carries a date and a source in the text. Not a footnote. In the sentence. | |||
| FREE. NO STOCK PICKS. NO PREDICTIONS. | |||
| Nothing here is investment advice. No company is named as an investment. |
