Article in today's W/E Australian, page-7

The article ends with ...."Whether or not Syrah is seen as opportunistic — ahead of final licences from the government and the release of its feasibility study and financing details — remains to be seen."

As I said on the SYR thread, the author was also writing about the Glencore T/O. I suspect there will be a similar article in the AFR on Monday - these two seem to have access to the same "unkown source".

Would BHP's S32 spin off be interested??? Maybe, but graphite is not your average mining venture - the dig it up and ship it out ones BHP/RIO are into - it's specialised and way too "fiddly" IMO for them. You need to produce graphite that fits end users specifications, there is a lot of testing (cost involved) before a product meets the required specification and then the amounts sold are usually not that large. Doesn't fit the BHP/S32/RIO/Glencore profile currently. There's a lot of the hype is on FUTURE volumes in new markets, but as yet they have not materialised/formalised - i.e. that natural graphite will take the place of synthetic in LIB's, that the aluminium industry will switch to natural graphite anodes - ditto recarburisers for the steel industry. If those don't live up to the current hype, where will everyone's motherloads head??

Perhaps they will find a new use - stick it in our water in place of flouride - that should get rid of a few KTPA

I like the graphite story, but geez there is way too much hype around the traps and it's starting to scar me.