Kilbourne Graphite seals supply trial with RHI Magnesita
Titan Mining Corporation has secured a conditional supply agreement with RHI Magnesita, one of the world's largest producers of refractory materials, marking the first industrial-scale commercial trial for its Kilbourne Graphite Project in upstate New York. The deal, struck between RHI Magnesita and Titan's subsidiary Empire State Mines LLC, follows successful laboratory qualification confirming that Kilbourne-produced natural flake graphite meets the technical specifications required for high-temperature industrial applications.
The conditional arrangement covers an initial volume of natural flake graphite, with the option to scale up to 10% of Kilbourne's projected commercial tonnage if the production trial succeeds. Titan's CEO Rita Adiani described the progression from lab testing to industrial-scale trial as demonstrating "growing demand for secure North American graphite supply chains," a framing that situates this deal squarely within the broader critical-minerals contest playing out between Western governments and China-dominant supply chains.
From refractory to battery and defence: a wider end-market thesis
Graphite's strategic significance has expanded well beyond its traditional role as a refractory material in steelmaking and foundry operations. Titan explicitly targets three end markets: industrial (refractory), energy storage (where natural flake graphite is a precursor for battery-grade spherical graphite used in lithium-ion anodes), and defence. That three-sector spread is not incidental. US policymakers and allied governments have moved aggressively to reduce dependence on Chinese graphite since Beijing's export controls on the material tightened in late 2023, a shift that has injected urgency into every credible North American graphite development project.
Titan claims the distinction of being the United States' first end-to-end natural flake graphite producer in 70 years, a gap that underlines just how hollowed-out domestic critical-minerals processing capacity became during the offshoring era. The company has received backing from the US Export-Import Bank under its Make More in America initiative, signalling government appetite to underwrite domestic supply-chain reconstruction rather than simply subsidise end-product manufacturing.
Capital landscape and convergence risks
The supply-trial agreement is a de-risking milestone rather than a commercial revenue event. Titan is still completing a Feasibility Study for Kilbourne, and the conditional supply arrangement is explicitly subject to the production trial's outcome. Investors tracking the critical-minerals space will note that the route from a successful refractory trial to battery-grade qualification is not linear: the processing steps and purity thresholds for anode-grade graphite are significantly more demanding than those for refractory applications, and a separate qualification cycle with battery-cell manufacturers would be required.
Nonetheless, the RHI Magnesita relationship provides Titan with something arguably more valuable at this stage than revenue: a named global offtaker willing to run industrial-scale trials on US-sourced material. In a sector where Chinese producers still account for the vast majority of global flake graphite output and processing, that commercial validation carries weight with project-finance lenders assessing the bankability of a construction decision.
The broader capital picture for critical-minerals projects in North America remains mixed. The Inflation Reduction Act's domestic-content incentives and the IRA-linked battery supply-chain credits have drawn significant institutional capital toward lithium, nickel and copper, but graphite has attracted comparatively less dedicated investment, partly because the battery-grade processing pathway remains less well-established outside China. A successful Kilbourne trial with a tier-one industrial customer could help shift that calculus, particularly as US defence procurement increasingly lists graphite among the materials subject to supply-chain security requirements.
The feasibility study outcome and the production trial result, expected to mature in parallel over the coming months, will be the next meaningful signals for the project's trajectory.