The astonishing orebody at Balama West, and its potential for...

The astonishing orebody at Balama West, and its potential for the future of SYR, is certainly the big news of the month, in the graphite world. It's all good news for SYR, but what about the impact on the other producers and explorers?

Joenes talked at length about things he believes are critical to the small graphite companies. But he (very conspicuously!) did not mention the two questions which must now loom as fundamental to the success, and even the survival, of those same small graphite companies. They are:

1. How do you compete with somebody who has a resource one hundred or more times as large as yours, and who can increase production, virtually at will, up to the total world demand, if necessary, at low cost?

2. How do you persuade a bank to put up the money for a development, when the first thing that a banker will ask is how you handle Question 1?

These have to be the key issues facing management at most, if not all, graphite explorers in the world, right now (except SYR!). Any way you look at it, their future has become much more clouded.

Cheers, Prime1