Morning Tizard, your post reads more than a little disingenuous...

Morning Tizard, your post reads more than a little disingenuous and patronising but fair enough Isuppose. Not many holders appreciate non-holders popping up with unflattering analysis every time a flattering release is dropped. Plenty of REE explorers I never bothered delving into and plenty I stopped following at all because their projects already look cooked imo. I post here because ITM's location, laterite and RE grades show some ICD potential at early stages of exploration/evaluation. I post only for inquisitive HC readers wanting to consider results/releases in a critical light, not to blinkered holders whom only see what they want to see. Forum is free to correct or challenge my views, no damage done.

Graphite I don't follow at a project scale, but a commodity sitting at an interesting junction in it's history don;t you think? 40 years now graphite has been the anode material of choice with incremental changes in processing and design, silicon doping the latest improvement to it's energy density. Strikes me as a very high risk play for new miners though, bit like the VHS tape before CD's became popular as an analogy. Everyone had VHS cassettes in the early 90's, CD's were invented but not yet mainstream, so manufacturers still produced millions of VHS recorders. Even as CD's began to take off VHS required huge production because it takes time to transition from one format to another. Manufacturers knew their time was limited but had to max out production and profits from sunk industrial capacity into final falling demand until extinction rapidly consigned VHS to history.

The questions for graphite investors are surely

Do graphite anodes get replaced by one or more of new technology, high energy density, fast charging anodes being worked up by numerous universities/companies around the globe ploughing billions annually into reversing climate change through better battery performance (eg 100% silicon, carbon nano-tech, metal anodes etc)?

If old tech graphite is replaced, when and how quickly does the 'run-off' production changeover into new anode tech happen?

There is undoubtedly good money to be made early from existing producers or those who can get up and running quickly, repay their capex and actually make a return on investment before the extinction event. Mineral economic game theory says existing graphite producers will rapidly expand production into falling demand/price to reduce margin costs through economies of scale in an effort to remain under the cost curve loss-point despite this action exacerbating industry over-supply and graphite price falls. The suicidal reality for competitive, low marginal cost commodity markets when supply outstrips demand.

Sooner or later markets will see this graphite anode turning point coming (if new tech works out) and refuse to fund any new graphite mines because it becomes obvious time is too short to risk more investment. IMO, by the 2030 new solid state, metal anode batteries with far superior energy density and performance will be perfected and proven sufficiently that new giga-factories will have transitioned away from graphite. How quickly does legacy old tech graphite battery factories run down production into superior and ever increasing economy of scale new gen anode batteries?

So investors need to take a view on graphite anode tech specifically, and battery development generally. Let's agree it's too hard for retail punters to call the outcome/timing, but simple logic to see there is considerable risk demand-supply both head in opposite directions later this decade. The risk for explorers like ITM is they are too late and the development window closes before the DFS, finance, funding etc is all locked in. The risk is binary and existential... first mover advantage, all or nothing. How many years to work through all the FS and permits to reach funding, then get project built, ramped up into full production.... say minimum 7 years from scratch for an explorer, say 5 years for ITM? The clock is ticking and 2030 isn;t that far away in project time.

If one is bullish graphite long-term there are better developers in the market imo. One I looked into through mineral sand research has a very large graphite resource with very negative production costs after rutile bi-product credits. Projects with such a negative graphite production cost may actually be able to comfortably ride out a graphite price crash and remain standing after enough other graphite producers have gone bust and removed excess supply from the market? Just a thought...

Kaolin is a different market altogether. If ITM can muscle into large volume kaolin sales profitably (not HPA but porcelain, concrete replacement, large tonnage markets) their is certainly a chance to profitably insert REE leaching of the <45micron into the production process and leverage the existing sunk infrastructure, overheads and mining costs. If the kaolin market could take >5Mtpa product from ITM for example, they would have a scale that produced meaningful amounts of REO bi-product at effectively negative costs after kaolin/HPA credits similar to the rutile-graphite example described above. If ITM discovered HPA/kaolin product quality clays with double current REO grades and good leach recoveries in large volume then the maths starts to look very attractive indeed...

Most smaller boutique type commodities have much more interesting market dynamics than the well known big ones imo. Lot of money to be made/lost in the right/wrong stocks picking big swings in the demand/supply balance of emerging/dying boutique commodities don't you think?

Cheers