The key takeaways on the fundamentals of the graphite market were that the Chinese industry is going through structural change causing a drop in production of 40-60,000 tpa. This is happening at a time that new uses of graphite are being developed, particularly for electric cars. China has been producing 85% of the world’s natural graphite. The only other significant producer of graphite is Brazil, but it consumes what it produces. World supply in 2013, was 700,000 tonnes.
In terms of grades, anything above 10% is considered very good and better than most of the Chinese mines. About 50% of world production comes from grades less than 6%. The average mine size is 20-30,000 tpa of graphite concentrate, so they are small and without economies scale. The keys to commerciality are offtake agreements and partnerships, and the industry has been traditionally small scale so there has not been the need for large deposits.
assay results confirm existence of additional high-grade flake graphite mineralisation,with hole MD600 returning 29.8% graphitic carbon over 16 mtrs including 10 mtrs at 38% graphitic carbon within the existing resource envelope.
