@fincmifr, your sweeping statements appear to be glossing over a...

@fincmifr, your sweeping statements appear to be glossing over a whole heap of history, some of which you may be unaware of. I don't want to bore people, so I will just point out a few of the problems with what you are saying.

The Feasibility Study (prepared by Snowden's) was published back in May 2015. A lot has since changed, especially prices. For instance, you criticise the then assumed basket price of US$1000/tonne, while apparently having no idea how it could have been arrived at. Well, just three months before the Feasibility Study was published, there was an announcement of an Offtake Agreement with Chalieco. The announcement stated that:

"Based on forecast prices from Benchmark Minerals, the forecast weighted average basket price ... is expected to be USD1100 to UDS1600 per tonne, from 2015 to 2019"

So the price of US$1000 assumed in the FS was probably, at that time, perceived as conservative. Yes, it's easy to sneer at them today. All those estimates have been shown to be wrong. Price forecasts by other companies at the same time were mostly much higher. Thus, with the great benefit of hindsight, they were most definitely (as I said earlier) "unreliable"! Was that too polite a word?

In the same Feasibility Study, flake sizes were broken down to a range, not of just "fines" and "coarse", but into five specific mesh size ranges. They did not use the words "fines" and "coarse" in that classification.

As far as your claim that "industry problems" are confined to Syrah is concerned, try telling that one to shareholders in TON, WKT, or almost any of the other graphite hopefuls, from Australia, the US, and Canada, which have come and (mostly) gone over the past few years. Several have seized on a perceived possible market segment (such as expandable graphite), while apparently having only a hazy idea of how big (or small!) the market is for that product. It does not seem to have helped them much. How many have got a mine financed and started in serious production?

Product grade is set primarily by the requirements of the buyers. The addition of the attrition cells (not envisaged at the time of the Feasibility Study) gives the option to raise the grade of shipped product to 97-98% TGC. Lower figures can be simply tailored to what the buyer wants.

All this has been well-covered in company announcements from SYR and elsewhere. If you are interested in the graphite mining industry as an investment area, could I suggest that a bit of time could be usefully spent browsing through them.

Cheers