Herald sun John Beveridge 8/9/2014 THE graphite market continues...

Herald sun John Beveridge 8/9/2014


THE graphite market continues to develop quickly with early moves to set up a spot trading platform in China and a continuing shift towards hi-tech uses such as graphene. So Uranex chairman Frank Poullas was more than happy to announce a second memorandum of understanding yesterday for 100,000 tonnes from its Nachu project in Tanzania. Combined with an earlier MOU for 100,000 tonnes a year, realistic annual output from Nachu is now spoken for, with three Chinese customers being Sinosteel Liaoning, Dalian InterContinental and SINOMA. Much of the large flake graphite output will be for hi-tech uses such as electric car batteries and graphene with the rest for industrial use. Obviously the Chinese are largely convinced but the hard part now is delivering a mine, with diamond drilling data and testing now being shared. According to Mr Poullas, the rough production target is the third quarter of 2016, with a resource and pre-feasibility study due this year. Speculative buy.