comparison, page-6

The market for graphite is opaque and that makes funding more challenging. It is not a spot commodity like gold.

Perhaps the performance of the existing graphite producers is making potential funders skeptical, impacted by the grade and consistency of the product produced by SYR and BSM.

At least BAT have done extensive grade control (very tightly spaced drilling ) to help mitigate that risk:

https://hotcopper.com.au/threads/ha...4660497/page-12?post_id=37636379#.XPMHjNMzY6h

That grade control drilling would have been fed into the Technical Report produced by Behre Dolbear which is part of the funding process being run by Origin Capital. That Technical Report has been made available to potential funders. Latest status is in the AGM presentation and from this maybe light at the end of the tunnel soon (but with how much more dilution).

Generally in Tanzania the changes to mining tax legislation caused significant impact to funding progress for the ASX companies aiming to develop resources there. Apparently end is in sight for them but have not been following those stocks closely.

There is also a bit of a lag before the graphite demand really kicks in, so there is danger in trying to grow too big too quickly. Hence BAT changed their planned growth profile and shifted Montepuez Stage 2 an additional 1 year behind Stage 1. Balama project also shifted right. My annotations to one of their presentations (in red below):




Start of the expected shortage is anticipated by Benchmark Minerals to be in 2021:



Another factor in funding of graphite projects was the graphite price slump that occurred from 2016 to 2017. I think sentiment associated with Lithium oversupply has also rubbed off on graphite stocks.