I.e. Valence Industries...never could achieve higher than 93.5% LOI due to high carbonate clay ore...the American mining company that refurbished the plant in the early 1990's installed equipment such as a rock crusher and commercial magnetron (absolutely useless in flake graphite production) in an operation where neither were ever used to produce viable concentrate. The ball mill would gum up with heavy slims as well as unable to access fresh water on a consistent basis.
As for market application qualification timelines, anode or cathode conductive additives have a qualification life cycle of 2 to 5 years depending on application, or market (i.e. medical device, DOD, consumer goods, aerospace); nuclear grade graphite products (i.e. lubricants, coatings) up to 3 years and even traditional applications beyond simple which include crucibles, CGI, dispersions, descalants, SiC, etc.
PSD axis specifications for micronised will possess a small variance, but still will not qualify in every application; meeting American ASTM 11-87 guidelines for mesh sizes will also have variances as each mesh screen will have imperfections that will also affect the RET or PASS percentage of cumulative flake sizes by each screen fraction.
I recently reread the statements for the Syrah Marketing Economist claiming full sales of first years production and almost complete for the second is the most ludicrous thing I have read in a long time.
You do not presell graphite that hasn't been processed yet...Labs provide indicators for mesh size spread by percentage, but will show variances throughout the ore body.
Syrah has NO TAKE OR PAY supply contracts only MOU's or intents to purchase, by their own announcements, as these DO NOT EXIST in the graphite space for traditional flake products...there are many suppliers which negate the need for take or pay contracts. Even MOU's have out clauses, hence unenforceable in this case. Price is the driver in this case on a limited supply agreement basis with no penalties for none purchase.
ALL commercially produced graphite concentrate has to be qualified even if the lab or pilot plant concentrate samples were initially given the node. No customer is going to change its product production parameters or BOM based on lab evals...even refractories require field trials of at least 2o MT of finished flake graphite to verify the commercially produced product meets the same performance metrics as the lab samples and this alone can take 90 days or more for refractory customer end user verification. If the concentrate falls short, NO SALES!
I would challenge the Syrah Marketing Economist to provide hard data on Syrah's claims and assumptions as their market narrative and position contradicts commercial graphite production and sales for the past 120 years.
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