Trafigura Locks In $2 Billion Lithium Supply Deal With EnergyX

Commodities trader Trafigura has signed a binding ten-year take-or-pay agreement to buy 100,000 metric tons of lithium from EnergyX, a US lithium extraction and technology company, in a deal EnergyX valued at about $2 billion based on prices near $20,000 a ton, Reuters reported Monday. The agreement commits Trafigura to offtake from two EnergyX projects that have not yet reached commercial production: the Black Giant lithium carbonate project in Chile and Project Lonestar, a lithium hydroxide facility in Texas.

Betting on supply before it exists

Under the deal, Trafigura will take 66% of Phase 1 output from Black Giant and 30% of Phase 1 output from Lonestar, according to Reuters’ reporting on the agreement. EnergyX is targeting commercial-scale production at Black Giant in 2028 and at Lonestar in 2029 — meaning the offtake agreement locks in a buyer years ahead of first output, a structure increasingly common in critical-minerals financing as traders and battery makers compete for supply from projects still under development rather than waiting for them to reach production.

EnergyX markets a direct lithium extraction (DLE) process that it says can shorten the time from brine to finished product compared with the evaporation-pond method used by Chile’s incumbent producers. Black Giant draws on brine resources in Chile, a country forecast by data and analytics firm GlobalData to remain the world’s second-largest lithium producer behind Australia in 2026, with national output projected to rise to roughly 67,300 tonnes.

Financing built on top of the offtake

The Trafigura agreement builds on financing EnergyX has assembled over the past year. Italian energy major Eni made a $225 million strategic investment in the Black Giant project, and EnergyX has separately disclosed a $690 million letter of intent for financing from the US Export-Import Bank — a preliminary, non-binding step that Reuters notes has not yet converted into a final loan commitment. Combined with the new Trafigura offtake, the financing stack follows a pattern increasingly common among junior lithium developers: lining up a strategic equity investor, an export-credit facility and a buyer’s offtake commitment before a single tonne has been produced.

Chile’s lithium sector in flux

The deal lands as Chile’s lithium industry undergoes its own restructuring. Regulators recently approved NovaAndino Litio, a joint venture between state copper company Codelco and incumbent lithium producer SQM, in which Codelco will hold a majority stake while SQM retains operational control of the Salar de Atacama operation until 2031. That agreement is designed to extend SQM’s Atacama lithium rights to 2060 and lift capacity toward 300,000 tonnes a year by 2030, according to Benchmark Mineral Intelligence. EnergyX’s Black Giant project sits outside that joint venture, giving Chile a second large-scale lithium source beyond its traditional Atacama evaporation-pond operators if the project reaches production on schedule.

Neither company disclosed pricing mechanics, delivery schedules or termination terms beyond the binding nature of the agreement, the total contracted volume and the Phase 1 offtake split.

Sources

• Reuters, Oct. 12, 2026 — deal terms, contracted volume, offtake split and financing figures.
• GlobalData, March 2026 forecast — Chile lithium production figures.
• Benchmark Mineral Intelligence — SQM-Codelco Atacama joint venture and capacity figures.
• EnergyX company statement, via Reuters — project timeline and financing background.

Illustrative image. Photo: Coordenação-Geral de Observação da Terra/INPE, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons — source