So i read the comments regarding other miners in Sri Lanka, and decided to have a cursory look at them for comparative purposes. note that I am of course biased. note also that im really bored at the moment as significant other is currently 3500km away!
There aren't many operational mines in Sri Lanka, and the ones that are are rather small operations.
RS mines - currently mining on 21 acres - (around 85000 sq m. or 0.085 sq km) mining an earth shattering 240t/year. Recently announced an intention to increase this firstly to 1200 and then 2500tpa all this from 21 acres! admittedly the deposits that MRL is targeting may not be labelled as 'graphite mountains' as the queens mine is. They employed Bora Bora to do some surveys and they did some drilling and claim to have around 200,000t of graphite to a depth of 500m at that location, i can't seem to find what sort of areas RS mines has in terms of exploration licenses - if any. RS took a look at graphene back in 2013 but don't seem to have progressed, their process was nothing like the one employed at Uni of Adelaide, and they probably put it in the too hard basket and so perhaps are waiting for others to do the work, though I doubt they would have missed seeing MRL's results, they may be caught napping...
AMG-GK via Bogala Graphite Lanka plc. Seem to be mainly interested in supplying graphite to themselves for processing into products as a vertically integrated supply chain. Bogala Graphite's latest total revenue was around 5.3m AUD with net income of -100k. I would have to look through Sri Lankan reports to determine if they have an active exploration program or are looking to expand their operations and I cant be bothered right now, Bogala currently employ 183 people. AMG-GK say that their expertise extends over a century - their 'range of products' includes; expandable graphite, graphite for dispersion (read powder) and graphite parts see here -
Range of Products. Again, this does not seem earth shattering, it looks like someones great grandfather was somewhat of a visionary but they lost that gene somewhere along the way.
Bora Bora - they do do some really sound but costly geological work, which may or may not pay off in the long run. Recently terminated MoU with melb uni and a farm-in agreement with RS mines, both of which resulted in a loss, which is meangingful given Bora Bora are only explorers and need to raise cash to fund ongoing drilling/surveying activities and of course to fund their licenses of which they have 63 sq km of exploration in highly prospective areas, costing them a few thousand each month to maintain with targeted production being some ways off and slipping as they progress.
MRL - Should I call it MRL? their website has been updated to First Graphite. First Graphite is looking to Produce 5000t/per year, details are sketchy but from what I can gather the aluketiya project area is around 1 square kilometer (11 times the size of Queens Mine) and this is the project they have a current industrial mining license for. Note though that First Graphite does not have any buyers lined up, they could very well dig this stuff up and no one buys it! or they have to sell it for much less than anticipated, either way could be a major de-rate factor (risk v reward) First Graphite has quite a large exploration license portfolio, that they just doubled. They have exploration licenses covering 138 sq km, this, in a country which is 65,000 sq km and holds a population of 20 million and has 'protected areas' (parks and what not) that cover 26% of the land mass, is substantial. This is why tying up the available prospective land now is probably more important than mining it, they will need to service the license which is costly but I'm sure they have done the sums. Production is imminent, they have the cash on hand and have attracted wealthy and influential folks to back them.
I tend to agree that First Graphite have the potential to be the premier graphite miner in sri lanka (they cant be called this already as they havent mined anything) and I agree that this is probably down to sound management
Now for the pie in the sky stuff.
If First Graphite reaches its targets in the stated timeframe, will they be able to acquire enough of the exploration/mining rights to basically monopolise the SL vein market? Certainly Bora Bora would make a nice acquisition if they go pear shape, what with all their data and what not. Would the SL govt. allow this? haha ive allowed myself too much rope here i think but seriously if we want to talk about space stuff and what not, why not consider for a moment, graphene becomes a thing, and further consider that of all the ways to make it, vein graphite is the best/cheapest for large scale applications like reinforced concrete or super strong fibres or whatever and thus SL Vein is suddenly worth a packet, and First Graphite controls it ALL, what sort of price tag would that command, a dollar would be cheap. Haha, sorry if you dont like to fantasise....
