the customer will dictate

I think by now it is common ground that no 2 graphite deposits are the same. More than one company states that theirs is the largest in tonnage and content. This followed by the use of the term flake and avoidance of the word amorphous. Reviews by various commentators, journalists and brokers whose bias comes out because of their affiliation with a company has led to confusion to who may succeed in the commercial world. Life aint east is it. We all become a little biased once we have purchased our favourite.

We constantly hear of MOU’s for offtake, best described as intent (not a promise to buy) if and when you can dig it out and process it to their standards. These come from a commodity trader who by definition is a middleman, or from a downstream processor e.g. who has the infrastructure to take mine output of varying quality to meet exacting specification to individual applications (of which possibly no two are the same), every battery maker probably has different requirements.

The video by Dr Little (expert) makes the point that mine grade (%G) can be both a positive and negative, there being sweet spots around 5-6% and the high end vein deposits,. The middle 10-20% deposits can have difficulties and depending on origin will vary enormously on cost of processing to make a viable concentrate that has the right size and crystalline properties. How do you meet individual specification…not easy. That’s why a smaller miner say 20-50kt/annum may win out.

Of course the amorphous types will get more tons to market but at lower prices , this will become very competitive and differentiation in specification not so important, also it is likely that there will be found many more uses than traditional steel making.To be certain or have reduced risk in investing go for the companies with BINDING offtakes and a clear pathway to having their product accepted by end users. Those are the ones that will be around for a while yet. Energy storage/distribution/production is the space to be in . A sprinkling of graphene knowledge would not hurt.

The difficulty is CHOICE,not all explores will make it. G is more like iron ore than gold (gee and that’s not easy today). There is no lack of G around but many will not get the funding to become SERIOUs produces. In this case the customer s will dictate who wins.