I guess it's all subjective - but from my view the results are excellent.
Lets debunk a few uneducated/myopic opinions.
Grade is good/poor
-Well anyone who knows anything about mining would understand that the grade of a resource is just 1 of a dozen variables that impact economic viability of the mine. So to say the grade is good or bad with zero calibration to anything else is actually pretty stupid.
SGA has a great grade - means it's cost effective to mine. Well that would be fine if graphite was a DSO operation like iron ore. Unfortunately it's not - and that SGA graphite is pretty awful to process. Aka, any advantage it gets on a mining front it loses massively in the processing front. They've still not been able to produce battery grade material even using the most aggressive of techniques. (Yeah awesome grade though...
If you look at peers in australia ITM's grade is actually pretty comparable. Now what makes RNU very economic is that the deposit is fairly close to surface and flat lying meaning the strip is fairly favourable. Equally the other deposits are all pretty small. ITM now has scale to grow it's resource to a tier 1 size. This drilling is potentially validating that theory that the deposit at lacroma is actually quite massive.
ITM's Lacroma looks like it could be equally attractive on that front.
The second aspect for economically viable projects is the metallurgical properties. i.e. Can it be purified to battery anode quality and done so using cost/cheap methods?
For those that aren't aware ITM has already proven it's campoona deposit is amenable for CSPG. (coated spherical graphite). It also achieved it using an acid free flow-sheet - not dissimilar to RNU. Aka ITM already has material it knows is anode applicable.
Okay so what does that mean for Lacroma's met work?
Lacroma has already been run through the campoona flowsheet and performed as well as the campoona material i.e. It's already been confirmed for stage 1 met work. Unlike amost others who will be drilling a graphite project with 0 understanding how the met work will go, ITM's drilling a deposit where it already knows the met work is solid.
In essence this target (which they've flagged to be equal or larger than their sugarloaf deposit (which was 150-250mT) would rank it as one of the largest in australia.
ITM has around 100 holes to drill here (10,000m program) and we've just got the first 4 reported. They've also said they've already gotten approvals to extend that drilling program as required. (i.e. to ensure measured/indicated/inferred resource can be delineated.) Once this is converted to a JORC you're looking at a huge resource, based in SA - already known to be anode applicable material. close to surface, thick and ITM already have some of the prelim licensing applications in place (PEPR).
They've got plenty of cash so no CR on the horizon (i think around 8M) and a very decent corporate structure - so little in terms of options/rights etc to dilute the MC.
ITM is basically going to end up here on this graph.
Which for an Aus based project, de-risked/confirmed met work (which is the absolute key for graphite), licencing advanced will be extremely undervalued.
View attachment 5317732
Note, this resource graph above does not include ITM's sugarloaf deposit which is estimated at 150-250mT @ 7-13% ... Again it's the met work that they need to solve on that one - but hey for those obsessed with grade sugarloaf blows the rest of the australia projects apart. Again it's why i re-iterate you can't just look at one optic and make a call - need to consider the full suite of things at hand.
What i'm looking at is a company which is working towards building a business case of a graphite project in SA like the crown jewel that is RNU - it looks similar in grade, similar in size, similar geology, similar met flow sheet, similar location. One is worth 550M one is worth 23M (EV). I think there's upside - and the more drills that come back will validate the resource. Then the PFS/DFS will do the rest.
*disclosure i hold KNG (no met work and exploration target only) and BUX (CSPG met work in progress, resource increasing).
That's my 2c we'll see if i was wrong or next 6-12 months from here.
SF2TH
(20min delay)
