Ann: Production of Battery Specification Anode Precursor Material, page-72

Overview of Syrah’s BAM project

Development at the BAM project to date has been focused on establishing production lines that are of sufficient scale to demonstrate Syrah’s capability to supply ex-Asia markets with AMM that:

• has equivalent or superior physical and electrochemical properties to currently available material
• is cost competitive with incumbent graphite supply (currently 100% based in Asia)
• provides an environmentally superior alternative to existing AAM supply and,
• is capable of supplying growing US and European markets

Syrah’s site in Vidalia is well located with access to key utilities (water/gas/power) and nearby barge/port access to the Mississippi river for potential barge transport of natural graphite feedstock to Vidalia from the Port of New Orleans in future.

Proximity to established petrochemical industry provides access to key consumables (hydrofluoric acid, hydrochloric acid, caustic) and skilled workforce.

The site has confirmed compliance with water and air discharge regulations for large scale commercial production of AAM.

The operating plant currently installed at Vidalia includes 5 kt per annum capacity of graphite milling, batch scale purification capability (200 t per annum capacity) and all ancillary plant required to demonstrate capability to scale the graphite facility whilst maintaining product quality, environmental compliance and best practice health and safety procedures.

Procurement of a furnace is in progress, with installation expected to be completed in Q1 2021, which will enable qualification volumes of AAM from anode precursor to be produced at Vidalia.

In the meantime, anode precursor is now available for qualification with existing AAM producers and will also be processed to AAM via toll treatment to accelerate ongoing strategic and financial partnership discussions and end customer interactions.

Learnings from operating the installed plant at Vidalia and ongoing product development work is being incorporated into an in-progress BFS which is assessing the economics of expanding the capacity of the existing facility to 10 Kt per annum of AAM production capability initially, and then scale up to 40 Kt per annum.