Transcript:
Jon Dugdale: I’m the Technical Director to Metals Australia Ltd.
We’ve recently released the results of our spherical graphite test work conducted in Germany on our Lac Rainy Graphite Project in Quebec, Canada.
The highlight of those results has been the achievement of premium battery grade 99.96% spherical graphite purity for our graphite product.
This is in addition to other outstanding qualities that more than meet the requirements of lithium-ion battery manufacturers.
The next step in this process will now be looking at battery testing to test the charging qualities and the durability of this product.
But given our high quality results from our spherical graphite work, we’re very confident
of a very good outcome for that work.
So this will enable us to re-examine the project and expand the resource potential.
We’ve already identified a resource of 13.3 million tonnes, 11.5% graphite, but that only represents just under 20% of the identified graphitic trends that are present on the property.
Our initial program will be a broad based program to expand the scope of the resource and that’ll show us the resource potential for further drilling down the track.
It will also provide the samples for further downstream test work and for concentrate
to provide to potential off takers as well as provide information for a step up from our successful scoping study to pre-feasibility study.
Now that we’ve got these outstanding spherical graphite results, we’ll not only be looking at producing flake graphite concentrate, but will also be looking at downstream premium quality spherical graphite production in the North American market.
That North American market is rapidly growing in its demand for these type of products.
So being able to produce high quality premium spherical graphite product right on the doorstep of these rapidly growing markets for lithium-ion batteries, for electric vehicles
as well as renewable energy storage, presents an outstanding opportunity for value creation for Metals Australia.
