First to market, blessing or curse?

Remember all the hype about the 'race to market' among the graphite juniors and the assumption that winning that race would ensure a profitable future. And the assumption that the latecomers like TON and SYR were just graphite wannabes, years away from production and needing huge capital to get there. I posted along those lines, so did many others but were we right? The problem is that the first to market 'winners' VXL and FDR entered a market that offers just 30,000 tonnes of additional non Chinese graphite demand PA (link to Industrial Minerals twice posted ausheds). The lack of new demand is illustrated by the prices currently quotes in Industrial Minerals, all grades are flat to down and fines are hard to sell and well below the cost of production of the newcomers. So new to production companies with high cost of production like VXL and FDR and faced with low demand and a hard to sell and loss making, significant component of fines in their production split are struggling and that's reflected in the share price of both companies. Meanwhile the one trick megatonne projects like TON and SYR are doing very well. Paradoxically it is partly because they are late to market, but likely to enter a market with massively increased demand from about 2017 onwards. And being huge projects with all the economies of scale that go with that and massive resources that dwarf VXL's their cost of productions will be half as much. Late to production and one very profitable trick does appear to be a winning formula. Having said that VXL could still find a specialised trick or two and be profitable, we will have to wait and see.