Tesla has signed a deal with Magnis Energy Technologies, an interesting new battery technology company based in Australia. It could become an important partner for the automaker.

Magnis announced today that it signed an anode active materials (AAM) offtake agreement with Tesla:

Magnis Energy Technologies Ltd (“Magnis”, or the “Company”) (ASX: MNS; OTCQX: MNSEF; FSE: U1P) is pleased to announce that it has entered into a Binding Offtake Agreement with Tesla, Inc. (“Tesla”) for the supply of AAM beginning in February 2025 with fixed pricing.

The company is developing a graphite mine in Tanzania where it plans to get “ultra-high purity natural flake graphite” from the operation.

Under the agreement, Tesla plans to purchase “a minimum of 17,500tpa starting from February 2025,” and the automaker has an option for “a maximum of 35,000tpa for a minimum 3-year term at a fixed price.”

But the interesting part here is that Tesla is not just buying the graphite from Magnis. It plans to buy processed anode material (AAM) based on the graphite, and the deal involved Magnis building a US facility to produce the AAM:

The agreement is conditional on Magnis securing a final location for its commercial AAM facility by 30 June 2023, producing AAM from a pilot plant by 31 March 2024, commencing production from the commercial AAM facility by 1 February 2025, and customer qualification.

Magnis describes itself as “a vertically integrated lithium-ion battery technology and materials company.”

Along with its graphite mining project in Tanzania, the company is part of the Imperium3 New York consortium of companies working to build a lithium-ion battery cell gigafactory in New York.

Furthermore, Magnis is also a shareholder and partner with C4V, a New York-based battery cell technology company.

All these links to US-based battery projects could prove useful to Tesla as the automaker is looking to secure a large number of battery cells in order to support its plan to build 20 million electric vehicles per year by 2030.