MRL Corporation: Disruption In The Making

Disruption In The Making

http://www.mining-journal.com/technology/science-rd/disruption-in-the-making/?adfesuccess=0

Andrew Forrest may have a tad too much on his mind right at present to be too concerned about what his former colleague Warwick Grigor is currently promoting, but if Grigor is right (and it is a big if), Twiggy and just about everyone else in the resources sector will definitely have cause for concern sometime in the future.

• Michael Quinn
• 21 May 2015

Graphene, used in combination with other metals, can greatly improve those metals’ efficiencies

Grigor, who was with Forrest at investment firm Far East Capital back in the early 1990s (before Forrest chased the nickel laterite dream), has been pushing the new wonder material graphene for a while now, and he was at it again last week at RIU’s Resources Round-up in Sydney, Australia.

According to Grigor’s presentation, graphene is the basic building block of graphite, and a material that when used in combination with other metals, can greatly improve those metal’s efficiencies.

On Grigor’s reading, graphene’s properties are seemingly nearly endless, and hence potential applications are just about limitless.

And very disruptive for miners.

“If you can add a little graphene to copper you may find electric motors can use 80% less copper”
“Consider if you add graphene to aluminium, steel or copper, you greatly improve their performance,” Grigor said.

“You can really reduce the amount of steel you need by 50% to achieve the same structural strength. If you can add graphene to concrete and increase the tensile strength by 40% [and Grigor said tests were confirming this], you won’t need rebar in the concrete.

“If you can add a little graphene to copper you may find electric motors can use 80% less copper.”

Zinc was another put on notice.

“It won’t be long before graphene replaces zinc galvanisers,” Grigor said.

And so it went on.

The bottom line for Grigor is greater efficiencies will lead to less growth in demand and at worst demand could fall away significantly for these metals.

“Graphene won’t change things overnight, it will take many years for it to be fully commercialised, and for it to impact on the mining industry as we know it today, but it will be another issue mining companies will have to deal with,” he said.

“It will reinforce the need to have high-grade deposits and a position in the lowest cost quartile.”

Grigor conceded there had been a lot of claims about graphene, but even in conceding this he was able to further promote the material.

“There’s never been a material talked about with more hyperbole than graphene … there’s never been anything with more potential to change our industrial world than graphene … so the understandable reaction of anyone being introduced to graphene is one of scepticism,” he said.

“This is not surprising.

“What is different with graphene is that it is being promoted by the scientific community more consistently and more vocally than the entrepreneurial businessman.”

Present company excluded!

Regarding graphene supply, not all graphite is the same. “It seems the graphite needs to be crystalline, high grade, with low impurities,” Grigor said. He suggested “run of the mill” graphite like that found in Mozambique needed to go through much more expensive processing.

If true this is significant given claims by some that Mozambique and graphite is a potential development scenario akin to the Pilbara region in Western Australia and iron ore in the 1960s.

One company that is said to have the right sort of graphite is Talga Resources.

Grigor’s Far East Capital was involved in a A$3.1 million (US$2.4 million) capital raising with Talga last year at a share price of about half current levels, while Australia’s most successful prospector Mark Creasy bought shares in Talga at a fraction of that price in 2013.

Another company flagged by Grigor was MRL Corp, with its project in Sri Lanka.

All in all the RIU Sydney Resources Round-up performance by Grigor was solid.

As would be expected given it his job to initiate and be involved with selling investment themes. Will new investors and resource sector corporates take heed of Grigor’s claims and warnings? As he put it, how can anything be so revolutionary, so disruptive, and yet, in his words, so tangible?

“That is the hurdle of perception facing the investor.”

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Word is getting out there ....

Now I expect more announcements to come thick and thin and for a while now I have expected webcasts because a media run discussing the historic science and news would reveal this gem to the wider market and not just to the few of us that understand just how special it is and its implications.

The Production Supply Chain around the world is flying! Check it out !!!



Kind Regards

DYOR !!!!