By LAURA SYRETT
Published: Thursday, 08 January 2015 Print | Email | Comment | Sharei Eagle Graphite goes public on TSX-V; Focus receives funding interest from Cat Financial; StratMin updates on December production; graphene flying carpets target cancer
Canada-based Eagle Graphite Inc., formerly known as Amerix Precious Metals Corp., has announced the completion of a business combination with privately held Eagle Graphite Corp. (EGC), which sees the amalgamation of EGC with a subsidiary of Eagle Graphite Incorporated.
With an operational quarry located in British Columbia, EGC owns one of only two active graphitemines in Canada. Speaking to IM at the 4th Graphite and Graphene Conference in Berlin, Germany, in December, EGC’s president, Jamie Deith, said he felt it was "the right time" to take the company public.
Deith has now been appointed president and CEO of Eagle Graphite, which has received conditional approval from the TSX Venture Exchange for the transaction. Shares in Amerix were suspended in July 2014 pending completion of the deal, with trading expected to resume early this month.
TSX-listed Focus Graphite Inc. has announced that Caterpillar Financial Services Corp. (Cat Financial) has expressed a formal interest in financing the development of Focus’ Lac Knife graphite project in Quebec, Canada.
Don Baxter, Focus’ chief operating officer, said that the letter of interest put forward by Cat Financial represents an important milestone in the progression of Lac Knife’s project financing structure.
"The financing package could potentially represent 12% of the total project financing requirements and reduce operating costs as we move to owner-mining instead of contractor-mining, as outlined in our feasibility study," Baxter added.
While no formal agreement has yet been signed, Cat’s interest in funding Lac Knife’s development could signal a welcome thawing of investor sentiment towards the junior graphite sector, which has been given the cold shoulder by financial groups for the last two years.
UK-listed graphite producer StratMin Global Resources Plc sold 48 tonnes of graphite in December, which was lower than anticipated due to the Christmas holiday break.
The company produced 68 tonnes of dry mixed graphite from 288 tonnes of wet processed material and achieved an average grade of 93.14% C.
StratMin’s managing director Manoli Yannaghas said the company was encouraged by its progress and that it was looking forward to further developments. "The improvements to screening are expected to be brought online this month, as well as the increased mill capacity, both of which are expected to improve our ability to polish the graphite and therefore increase grades," he said.
The company said it is expecting to see an uplift in monthly sales in the early months of 2015.
Back in Canada, Canada Strategic Metals Inc. has released the results of five further holes drilled at the La Loutre graphite project in Quebec, which the company is developing in partnership with fellow TSX-listed graphite junior, Lomiko Metals Inc.
Assays of all five holes – which were drilled as part of the companies’ November exploration programme – indicated wide graphite intersections with grades ranging from 3.06% C over 21 metres to 15.65% C over 2.4 metres. Further drilling results will be released in due course.
The La Loutre property covers 2,500 ha (25km2) and is located approximately 53km east of Imerys Graphite & Carbon’s Lac des Iles mine and 117km northwest of Montreal.
Canada Strategic Metals’ CEO, Jean Sebastien Lavallee, said that La Loutre must have a minimum resource of 20m tonnes graphite with an average grade of 5% C and be able to deliver 1m tonnes of >94% C graphite to be economically viable. "In addition, we would like to define material [at] >99% C to be base material for testing the conversion of graphite to ultra-pure carbon and graphene for use in 3D printing," he added.
In a separate announcement, Lomiko’s CEO Paul Gill has outlined the company’s plans for 2015, which involves two new ventures. Lomiko Technologies and Graphene 3D Labs will be developed as technology-focused enterprises, while Lomiko Metals will continue graphite and gold exploration at its various Canadian projects.
In addition to a 40% stake in the La Loutre graphite mine, Lomiko is also exploring its wholly owned Quatre Milles graphite project in Quebec and its Vines Lakes gold project in British Columbia.
Also in Canada, ASX-listed Ardiden Ltd, formerly Stratos Resources, has produced a concentrate of up to 94.8% C from initial test work on samples taken from its Manitouwadge graphite project in Ontario.
The company said it achieved the results using simple gravity and flotation methods. Historical metallurgical analysis of the Manitouwadge deposit indicates that 55% of the contained graphite is jumbo or large flake material.
Ardiden has also informed the owner of Manitouwadge that it intends to exercise an option to acquire a 100% interest in the project for Canadian dollar (C$)149,000 ($126,000*), plus a minimum expenditure requirement of C$15,200 and the grant of a 2% gross production royalty to the vendor.
The company now plans to conduct a maiden drilling programme to test the site’s outcropping graphite at depth.
In Australia, Valence Industries Ltd has completed its feasibility study for the expansion of its phase one graphite mining, processing and advanced manufacturing capacity at the Uley project in South Australia, where operations commenced late last year.
Valence said that the feasibility study demonstrated an internal rate of return (IRR) of 46%, based on current ore reserves with phase two expansion capex of Australian dollar ($A)37m ($30m) staged over three years. Capex for phase three advanced product handling capacity has been estimated at A$13m.
Operating expenditure on a mine gate basis has been estimated at between A$400 and A$500/tonne, while sales have been pegged in the range of $A1,669-4,774/tonne.
Plans for staged 25,000/tonne increments in production would see Uley reach an output of 64,000 tpa graphite. Valence however intends to review some optimisation alternatives for the project before commencing significant construction.
In Sri Lanka, ASX-listed partnership RS Mines & Bora Bora have said that tests on >99% C powder derived from natural crystalline vein graphite extracted from the companies’ Sri Lankan deposits have shown that it can outperform both Chinese flake graphite and 99.99% C Sigma Aldrich synthetic graphite.
RS published findings from US-based Asbury Graphite Mills which examined the content and resistivity of its vein graphite against Chinese flake material, as well as Raman Spectroscopy analysis of the material versus Sigma Aldrich graphite.
The results show that RS’ material has a higher carbon content and better conductivity levels than Chinese flake and lacks the sp3 defect observed in synthetic material.
RS Mines is already operating the Queen’s Mine vein graphite deposit in Sri Lanka and has acquired a number of other sites for development across Sri Lanka in partnership with Bora Bora.
In financial news, TSX-listed Energizer Resources Inc. has closed a non-brokered private placement of 4.9m common shares at an issue price of $0.12/share for gross proceeds of $588,000.
The company paid a cash commission of $29,400 and issued 147,000 finder’s warrants in connection with the offering.
Energizer intends to use the cash raised to fund the production of purified graphite samples from its Molo graphite project in Madagascar and for general working capital.
Late last month, the company issued a clarification of an April 2013 announcement where it reported only pre-tax results from its graphite grade and operating sensitivity analysis of Molo. Post-tax results are included in its 12 April 2013 technical report update, published on SEDAR.
In graphene news, an international team of researchers has developed a cancer treatment that uses graphene strips as "flying carpets" to deliver two anticancer drugs sequentially to cancer cells, News Medical has reported.
The researchers from North Carolina State University and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in the US, working with scientists from the China Pharmaceutical University, found that by attaching the two drugs to graphene strips, they could target both the membrane and the nucleus of cancer cells separately and sequentially with the most effective treatments, respecitvely.
"These drug-rich graphene strips are introduced into the bloodstream in solution, and then travel through the bloodstream like nanoscale flying carpets," Dr Zhen Gu, senior author of the paper describing the work, explained.
Preclinical trials of the drugs on lung cancer tumours showed that using the graphene delivery technique enhanced the effectiveness of the two drugs, known as 'TRAIL’ and 'Dox’. The team is now looking for further funding to determine how best to proceed with the new technique.
Meanwhile, two scientists at the University of Pennsylvania in the US have posited using graphene to measure levels of the hydrocarbon benzene in groundwater that is at risk of contamination by fracking fluids.
Benzene is an organic chemical compound formed of carbon atoms, used in as many as six fracking fluid additives, according to The Environmental Integrity Project. According to the World Health Organization, human exposure to benzene has been associated with a range of acute and long-term adverse health effect, including cancer and aplastic anaemia.
Ashwin Amurthur, one of the scientists behind the research, explains in an article posted on the shale news website Bakken.com that the thinness and high surface area ratio of graphene allows it to be used to detect tiny amounts of benzene.
The scientists are hoping to win a $5,000 prize from the university as well as a commercial licence from its dedicated graphene physics lab to develop the technology, with the aim of eventually selling it as a sensing product to drilling companies.
Finally, delegates at the Chaos Communication Congress of hackers in Germany has heard how fingerprints can be faked using graphene and sprayable wood glue, according to a report in the UK newspaper The Guardian.
Jan Krissler, known in hacker circles as Starbug, told the meeting about a high profile stunt he performed in 2013, when he took a high resolution scan of a fingerprint from an iPhone and successfully recreated the print using graphene, allowing him to unlock the device which had been biometrically secured.
Krissler told delegates that he can now reproduce prints using close range photos of targets, rather than needing physical access to them or their property – a claim which, if true, raises concerns about the security of biometric data.
*Conversions made January 2015
