Moz mining Law, page-68

It's been said that one of the great danger points in life is when you start believing your own publicity. That is just what we are witnessing here. We see people constantly repeating incorrect statements, in the vain hope that it will all change into reality. Lewis Carroll, in "The Hunting of the Snark", said "Whatever I tell you three times is true". He would probably have made a good advertising man, but, sadly for the posters above, mere repetition does not make it so.

SYR is portrayed as having nothing but fine graphite, of significantly lower grade than MNS at Nachu. Wrong. Different zones of the Balama deposit have different flake sizes, which can be mined to meet a range of customer demand.

And what about grade? After all, the MNS study showed high-grade ore, didn't it? Well, yes - it was about 5.2% graphite, I believe. Poor old SYR, having to contend with what Poster 1973 describes as "junk" - so bad, in fact, that for several decades, SYR are unlikely to be mining ore of less than 18% graphite. But if the MNS apologists keep describing it as low-grade, low-value, maybe it will magically be changed.

And I haven't heard much about strip ratios recently. Did MNS report a 2:1 ratio for Nachu? Poor old Balama, stuck with a strip ratio of approximately 0.1:1 - how can SYR hope to compete?

Another of the mantras in nearly every post from the MNS brigade, on the SYR thread, is that of size distribution, because of a claimed vital need for large flake, for Li-ion battery production. Really, some of these guys are living in the past. Preferred spheroid diameter for Li-ion batteries is coming down, due to the need for greater surface area of graphite, to improve battery performance. Large graphite flakes just have to milled further for this application. SYR is well-advanced in battery-grade graphite production, having had a spherical graphite pilot plant operating successfully for more than six months. They are quietly, but very seriously, progressing in this market, as demonstrated by the relationship now established with Marubeni, addressing the Japanese and Korean markets. They have also announced a Preliminary Economic Study, based on a 25000 tonne per annum scenario, which would, just incidentally, make SYR the world's largest producer of uncoated, lithium-battery-grade, spherical graphite.

SYR are getting on with the job, and the next three months are looking particularly promising. If some people, whatever company they are invested in, want to shut their eyes to the truth, and prefer to keep repeating what they would like to happen, good luck to them. They really are believing their own publicity - and that's dangerous.

Cheers, Prime1