Stephen Riddle (CEO, Asbury Carbons, USA)
What investors really need to know about graphite.
in Graphite Investing News (GIN) - Nov 2014
GIN: All that said, you mentioned via email that flake size and purity are not necessarily what investors should be concerned with — really what they should worry about is average realistic selling price per tonne vs. average projected cost to produce a tonne of graphite concentrate. Can you expand?
SR: All or most of the junior graphite companies are wasting a lot of money and not spending money on the most important issue that investors need to address: what is the difference between average realistic selling price per tonne vs. average projected cost to produce a tonne of graphite concentrate?
Junior graphite companies should be spending investors’ money on finding ways to reduce projected costs and on finding ways to increase average selling prices. At the same time, they should be using realistic annual capacity volumes that will not oversupply the graphite market and are salable — based on today’s demand, the market is not ready for any graphite mines with much over 25,000 tonnes of annual capacity. The market just has not been growing, and if anything in the last two years it has dwindled a bit. The only growth currently for new and existing graphite mines outside of China is to be able to take market share from the Chinese graphite producers.
