Interesting article Woodpipe, thanks for reposting the link...

Interesting article Woodpipe, thanks for reposting the link provided by Windlove. This is a lot more relevant to graphite discussions, and goes to the heart of a number of points I've been making, primarily with regards to the super-pits, but it applies to all. Existing demand is nowhere near what people think it is, and of those who do realise it's actually quite small, many of those fool themselves into believing the growth in graphite market is "just around the corner" and by the time their chosen company gets into production, that there will be buyers falling over themselves to secure supply.

In an interesting conversation I had a couple of weeks ago, I was reliably informed that the current number of graphite buyers with off-takes in the market is less than the fingers on both your hands (and you'll have some spare fingers left over). Anecdotally, that would seem obvious given that there have been many companies looking for off-takes in past few years, and not many have materialised, and certainly not many outside China. For a graphite company, a buyer is a partner, and is arguably the most important piece of the puzzle (certainly in terms of securying finance). In that regard, KNL has secured two, independent, arms length, non-Chinese buyers, who are current graphite users for industrial purposes (as opposed to future tech purposes, I mean). Each of our two buyers will have completed global searches of existing and proposed near-production graphite deposits, so they will have most likely looked at Woxna (I dare say they have samples from Woxna production back in the 90s still sitting in their offices somewhere), and overlooked it, even though Woxna would have been one of the quickest to be able to restart production. That should be your biggest hint (and comfort) of the effect on KNL of Woxna being sidelined, which is essentially a nil effect. However, it's certainly a caution for any mine wanting to start production in the next 2 years which hasn't yet been able to secure a (genuine) buyer. The "build it and they will come" mentality won't work with a graphite mine. They have to find the buyers first.