I stayed home on Thursday, 7/3/2024, because I could not start...

I stayed home on Thursday, 7/3/2024, because I could not start my car. I concocted this post to kill time.

Post is of future relevance to WAK

Presuming that WAK's kaolin has a shape factor of less than 12, this post becomes relevant to WAK when it has a delamination facility, which WAK plans to introduce in what it calls Stage 2. WAK has harped on about delamination for many years, and the most recent AGM Presentation states, “Planned entry into the high premium paper market (via unique processing circuit R&D).” That means that WAK plans to use a K99 product as a feedstock for its delamination add-on step, which must be a wet process.

The ore deposit determines the markets

An axiom in the kaolin business is that the ore deposit determines the markets, so WAK's attempts to sell fine-grained K99F kaolin made from primary ore is counter-intuitive. Primary kaolin tends to be coarse, because it has not been subjected to natural delaminating and fracturing across the crystal plane that sedimentary kaolin has undergone, Consequently, for fine-grained kaolin, competition from sedimentary kaolin from the USA and Brazil has an advantage.

For the same reason WAK is not suited as a supplier to the paper sector, generally. However, there is a subsector, especially in Japan, for high-premium-paper-coating for light-weight paper that requires a degree of delamination that can only be achieved if the kaolin crystal structure is well ordered, and the kaolin is very pure. This is a point that requires its own Hotcopper post, so I'll not belabour it.

An obvious market for WAK

An obvious market that suits WAK's ore is k99C for pressure-cast ceramics, especially pressurised slip casting required to mass produce toilet bowls, where production speed requires hasty drainage of the water in the liquified mixture of kaolin, ball clay, silicon sand and feldspar. WAK has a team based in Malaysia to pursue the ceramics market that was started by Petsy Loo's appointment in July 1923 as Regional Sales Manager – Asia. An ability to speak Mandarin was a requirement specified in the advertisement for that position, because China is a major market.

A new-to-me market

I stumbled across a new-to-me sector that can use coarse kaolin – namely, to make resins used in composites.

The patent application at https://patents.google.com/patent/WO1998037152A1/en relates to making a coarse kaolin product with a Stokes equivalent spherical diameter (esd) of about 4.5 - 6.0 microns, and a shape factor (aspect ratio) of 12-14 for the resin and paint subsectors. The resin subsector includes resins used with fibreglass to make composite items, so it has a nexus with Stanco's target market, the continuous-filament fibreglass subsector.

Meeting an esd specification of 4.5 - 6.0 microns would be a doddle for WAK. The 12-14 shape factor is at the high end of naturally delaminated kaolin. I think the highest shape factor for kaolin that is not delaminated by human interference is usually regarded as being below 15. WAK's undelaminated kaolin is probably not flat enough, but when WAK gets into delamination, which Management wants to do, to get a shape factor of 12-14 would be undemanding. It could be a by-product of the more demanding beneficiation required to make a high-premium paper coating.

The patent application details the applicant's beneficiation steps, and they are not trivial, so the issue boils down to the comparative beneficiation cost of US and Brazilian suppliers compared to WAK. To get a feel for the degree of beneficiation that is central to the patent application, the application states “Preparation of the coarse particle clay involves blunging and degritting a crude kaolin clay, conducting three separate centrifugation steps with the desired product stream being, in sequence, the coarse underflow clay from the primary centrifuge, the coarse underflow from the secondary centrifuge, and then the fine overflow from the tertiary centrifuge, followed by magnetic separation, screening, chemical leaching, drying and milling to produce a kaolin clay product having the above-described physical properties and performance characteristics.” The screening involves a 325 mesh screen to effect a > 45 micron residual of 0.1 wt%.