Ann: March Quarterly Activities and Cashflow Report, page-23

If I were to speculate re the extended time for the Syrah DFS I think it might be related to the fact that graphite is an industrial mineral where the JORC guidelines for reporting reserves would be very tight.

For a gold project a DFS can typically be knocked over in 6 months - in this case the sale of the gold is barely even considered as the gold dore can simply be delivered to a refiner and it is sold seamlessly into the market by the refiner.

For copper projects the mining company needs offtake terms with a smelter - the smelters provide TC/RC's, payable metal and penalties for impurities such as mercury and arsenic - based on the metallurgical aspects of the concentrate. However there are a lot of smelters around - the copper market is huge - and getting these terms are a pretty standard process and do not typically hold up a DFS.

But for a graphite project? I am not totally up to scratch with the requirements of the industrial minerals section of the JORC Code, however I would suspect for a company to provide an ore reserve statement out of a DFS for a graphite project - the JORC Code requires an independent competent person i.e. consultant to sign off on the reserves) - I reckon you would need every tonne of product covered by a firm commitment statement from an end user. If it is not covered by an end user it would have to be treated as waste in the mining plan and financial model. My speculation is that it is this what Syrah would be taking time to sort out, and all other graphite wannabees will also come up against.

Put it this way - the mining/metallurgical/process design/infrastructure elements of the DFS would have been completed many moons ago - in the first 6 months. So what is left? Selling the product....

Gosouth