Every argument about EV batteries seems to orbit the same short list of metals. Lithium, nickel, cobalt, manganese, the cathode ingredients that show up in every supply-chain headline and every nervous earnings call. The anode, which is the other half of the cell, almost never gets a turn, even though it is built mostly from a single material that comes overwhelmingly from a single country.<\/p>\n
That material is graphite, and China produces 79.4% of the world’s mined supply, according to Natural Resources Canada<\/a>. On May 19, Canada decided to stop watching from the sidelines. Prime Minister Mark Carney put a shovel in the ground at a mine north of Montreal that his government is billing as the largest graphite mine in the G7, and the genuinely new part is not the size. It is that the whole operation is designed to run without diesel.<\/p>\n The mine is called Matawinie, it belongs to Nouveau Monde Graphite (NYSE: NMG), and once it reaches full output it is expected to produce about 106,000 metric tons of graphite a year. Carney put that number in perspective at the groundbreaking, according to BNN Bloomberg<\/a>, telling the crowd it amounts to The anode in a lithium-ion cell is the electrode that holds lithium ions while the battery is charged and releases them as it discharges. In almost every EV on the road, that anode is built from graphite, either mined natural graphite or a synthetic version cooked out of petroleum coke. It is not a trace ingredient, and there is currently no mass-market battery chemistry that does without it.<\/p>\n Which is why the production map matters so much. China’s 79.4% share is not a narrow lead. The next-largest producer, Madagascar, sits at 5.6%, and Canada ranks eighth in the world. For the United States, the dependency runs straight through its northern neighbor: in 2024, 78% of Canada’s natural graphite exports and 56% of its synthetic graphite headed south across the border. Every North American battery plant counting on a non-Chinese anode is, in practice, counting on mines like this one getting built. It is the same vulnerability that has Washington signing billion-dollar checks for rare-earth magnet plants<\/a> and chasing tungsten it stopped mining a decade ago<\/a>.<\/p>\n Here is the part that separates Matawinie from a generic “a mine opened” story. NMG has designed the operation around an all-electric production model, with both the mine and its planned processing running primarily on Quebec’s hydroelectricity, which is abundant and cheap by North American standards. The argument is that a graphite mine powered by hydro produces its material with a fraction of the emissions tied to conventional supply chains, most of which lean on coal-heavy grids overseas.<\/p>\n The headline machine is a Caterpillar 950GC wheel loader, except this one runs on batteries instead of diesel. Ottawa is putting C$4.4 million through Natural Resources Canada’s Energy Innovation Program toward deploying it at the site to replace diesel-powered heavy equipment. One electric loader does not decarbonize a mine on its own, but it is a concrete piece of hardware rather than a sustainability slide, and it points at where the operation is trying to go.<\/p>\n The longer-term plan is bigger than the pit itself. NMG intends to pair the mine with a battery-material plant in B\u00e9cancour, Quebec, that would turn raw concentrate into the spherical, coated graphite that actually goes into an anode. If both halves get built, NMG would hold Canada’s first fully integrated graphite operation, from ore to refined material, on a single hydro-powered chain. That second plant is not a done deal yet. The company says it is targeting a final investment decision on the 13,000-metric-ton B\u00e9cancour plant in the second half of 2026, with that output earmarked for Panasonic Energy.<\/p>\neight times Canada’s total graphite production right now<\/q>. Canada currently mines roughly 12,000 metric tons a year, which works out to about 0.7% of the global total. So the jump is real, even if the timeline behind it is longer than a ribbon-cutting makes it sound.<\/p>\n
Graphite is the half of the battery nobody argues about<\/h2>\n
The mine is built to run without diesel<\/h2>\n
Carney’s six-month groundbreaking, and the fight over who gets credit<\/h2>\n