exceptional metalurgical results, page-56

"a lot of posters who follow the SYRians postion get confused"
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Their Global Marketing Manager's report (I've posted before) had this to say

"Besides this, there are also very serious expectations from Lithium ion battery market. While currently small, it’s the most important growth market for natural flake graphite. Lithium-ion batteries contain up to 10 times the amount of graphite as lithium, so the potential is great, especially if electric vehicles (EVs) catch on in the market. It was estimated that Lithium ion battery market could create another 1 million tonnes demand by the year 20205. These expectations and price increases start a boom in graphite market, and currently over 100 graphite projects announced to the market.

But we must add a comment here, first of all it is very obvious that majority of these projects won’t be developed for next stages, and won’t be even closer to production, as they are too sensitive on prices, they are very high costs projects, and for mining perspective they are logically not doable.

If you look carefully you see that all of these projects are FLAKE graphite projects, as they explained that flake graphite will be very important for new uses like Lithium batteries, but currently we don’t have that size of demand, and on the other hand, IT IS JUST BECAUSE FLAKE GRAPHITE PRICES ACTUALLY HIGH ENOUGH TO SHOW THE INVESTORS A PROFITABLE PROJECT. We will see some price decreases in the market and they will significantly affect these projects and juniors. Almost all of these projects are financial investment/venture capital projects, and even a small price decrease will create a panic for financial investors. For this reason to develop low cost mining projects are very important."

Likewise, currently we don't have that size of demand for graphene - someway off.

What we do have is the lion's (85.5%) share of the graphite market - a $13 billion dollar demand for synthetic graphite - "where PURITY is paramount and crystallinity less so. Campoona provides natural graphite at grades to rival synthetic graphite whilst at the same time delivering highly crystalline graphite."

If AXE can produce a consistent product to suit this market, I'll be very happy and more than happy to leave the other 1.5% of the market to those chasing the jumbo flakes.



http://saituysal.com.tr/images/MTEN.pdf

Interesting to see AXE gets a mention under Notes and Bibliography, along with other experts in the Industrial Minerals field - #3 Archer Exploration Limited http://www.archerexploration.
com.au/assets/pdfs/AXE%20Graphite%20110922.pdf