The Investors Guide to Graphene, page-8

I don't know when the pilot plant would be operational. I do know that the permit application has been submitted and the plan was to have this pilot plan up and running this summer (from the Oct 2014 investor presentation). The environmental impact report (in Swedish) is also available on Talga's website.

What is reassuring is that the one-step extraction process on the raw ore has been replicated by four different institutions. My understanding of this process is that it simply involves electricity in water through the ore. As I recall, the graphene floats to the surface and the graphite sinks. Water is abundant there and electricity is ridiculously cheap. Early versions of the corporate presentation (years ago) highlighted the low cost of their hydro + nuclear electricity. They also generate electricity using the trains carrying iron ore down from the mountains to the ports (heavy trains going down generating electricity, empty trains going back up). One of the possibilities apparently has been to set up the pilot plant on a small corner of an existing iron ore mining project nearby to tap their infrastructure. Don't know what stage negotiations are, but Mark certainly has been thinking hard about keeping costs down.

What has impressed me recently is how quickly Mark has been able to tap into the $1 billion euro program to commercialize graphene. There is serious R&D money for graphene and this can provide the catalyst to link Talga's product with corporate end users.