Mothballed, page-26

The paper appears to suggest that the water issue was known but the tailings dam was a new issue which should have been recognized given that SA environmental regulations have been significantly tightened and the lawyer (Wilson lawyers - CD) should have recognized that the then existing mining approvals (at IPO) had been superseded and thus defunct

What also concerns me is the following statement:

"no differentiation of graphite ore was made in initial mining operations during the late 1980s. During a lengthy commissioning and fine tuning of the beneficiation plant, difficulties were experienced in achieving consistent graphite product grade and quality.  Ultimately, an important cause of variation was traced to the presence of carbonate impurity in some of the graphite ore (Keeling et al., 1992).  Upgrading the beneficiation circuit and exclusion of carbonate-cemented ore during 1992 resulted in significant improvement in the consistency of graphite recovery and grade."

Are the stockpiles they are using (and claimed as a windfall) the carbonate-cement ore mined in 1992 which was discarded due to difficulties of the impurities being released from the graphite?  

I have also found an interesting article by Ashbury Carbon (experts in the graphite market) which is at

Ashbury Carbons note on graphite processing

Are these "intercalated” form of impurity?  The article makes it clear that there is a delicate balance between the amount of grinding and preservation of the flake size - this would appear to be the problem VXL are experiencing and the implication of their announcements is that their problem is to obtain the required throughput whilst also producing "in spec" product.  I would hope that VXL were aware of these issues as Tony Rechner was the MD of Eagle Bay Resources (renamed to SER) and is currently still on the SER board (and on the VXL(then SEG) board at the time of the IPO).   It just seem incomprehensible to me that with all the past experience of processing Uley ore the whole thing has been such a fiasco and that original consultants that according to the chairman (25/11) were "poor selection of the initial group of consultants to undertake the revitalisation of the Uley plant" and also "inadequate scoping of work" and this has gone on for nearly 2 years.  I hope they are looking at the indemnity insurance of the "initial group"; it appears to me to be gross incompetence combined with evasive behaviour