Thanks, Tobyjack, for putting this material front-and-centre of...

Thanks, Tobyjack, for putting this material front-and-centre of the graphite mine discussion.

This statement is really Mr McKinnon, of Energiser, publicly admitting that their Molo deposit, in the mountains of Southern Madagascar, suffers from a serious disadvantage, compared to the SYR orebody at Balama.

Quite simply, Molo has major infrastructure problems, especially in regard to the supply of power. Right now, and apparently into the foreseeable future, they are forced to use diesel powered generators at the site, with corresponding very high costs. Energy can represent a large slice of the operating costs at a mine, and McKinnon's words bear this out - to the extent that they may be unable to exploit their vanadium resource for quite some time.

Contrast this predicament with the position at Balama, which is scheduled to have ample power from the Mozambique grid, connected at the site before the end of this year. And, of course, because Mozambique has large amounts of cheap hydro-electric power to sell, the price is low - about 4.5 cents per kilowatt-hour (Wouldn't we like to see that in Australia!)

Economies of scale may also help Balama. After all, it is at least five times larger than Molo, and the graphite orebody is about twice as rich, so SYR have more options available.

Cheap power not the only reason that Balama is likely to able to produce vanadium (and graphite) fairly quickly, but it sure helps.

Cheers, Prime1