North of 60 Mining News - The mining newspaper for Alaska and Canada's North

Graphite One Inc. Feb. 22 announced that it has raised C$10 million to help fund ongoing evaluation of Graphite Creek and the mid-year completion of a prefeasibility study for the world-class graphite project in western Alaska.

The prefeasibility study will build upon a 2017 preliminary economic assessment that outlined plans for a mine at Graphite Creek that would produce roughly 60,000 metric tons of 95% graphite concentrate per year and a separate processing facility to refine these annual concentrates into 41,850 metric tons of the coated spherical graphite used in lithium-ion rechargeable batteries and 13,500 metric tons of purified graphite powders annually.

The World Bank forecasts that low-carbon energy technologies, primarily lithium-ion batteries, will require 4.5 million metric tons of graphite per year by 2050, which is about a 500% increase over 2018 levels and a 318% increase over the total graphite produced in 2019.

"Graphite demand increases in both absolute and percentage terms since graphite is needed to build the anodes found in the most commonly deployed automotive, grid, and decentralized batteries," the World Bank penned in the 2020 report, "The Mineral Intensity of the Clean Energy Transition."

According to "Mineral Commodity Summaries 2021," an annual report published by the United States Geological Survey, the U.S. continues to be 100% import-reliant for this lithium-ion battery anode material. China (33%), Mexico (23%), and Canada (17%) were the largest sources for the 41,000 metric tons of natural graphite imported during 2020.

China also processed most of the world's spherical graphite, which is the upgraded form needed in lithium-ion batteries.

"A U.S. automaker continued building a large plant to manufacture lithium-ion electric vehicle batteries," USGS penned in the graphite section of its 2021 Mineral Commodities Summaries, referring to Tesla. "The completed portion of the plant was operational, and it produced battery cells, battery packs, drive units, and energy storage products. At full capacity, the plant was expected to require 35,200 tons per year of spherical graphite for use as anode material for lithium-ion batteries."

With 10.95 million metric tons of measured and indicated resources averaging 7.8% (850,534 metric tons) graphitic carbon; plus 91.89 million metric tons of inferred resource averaging 8% (7.34 million metric tons) graphitic carbon, Graphite Creek could help fill North American graphite demand being driven by electric vehicles and energy storage for decades.

And the deposit outlined so far represents only a small fraction of the thick lenses of graphite surfacing along a 11-mile-long stretch of the Kigluaik Mountains on Graphite One's property.

To fund the prefeasibility study based on the measured and indicated resources outlined so far, Graphite One closed two private placements.

The first financing involved the issuance of 16 million Graphite One units at C50 cents each, for C$8 million in gross proceeds. Each unit consists of one common share and one transferable common share and one full warrant that allows the holder to purchase a share for C61 cents over the next two years.

The second financing involved the issuance of 2.56 million units at C78 cents each, for another C$2 million. Each unit consists of one common share and one transferable common share and one full warrant that allows the holder to purchase a share for C98 cents over the next two years.

The warrants for both financing have conditions for early expiration dependent on Graphite Ones share price on the TSX Venture or Toronto Stock Exchange. Graphite One's share price shot up to a high of C$1.69 in early hours trading on Feb. 25.

Author Bio

Shane Lasley, Publisher

Over his more than 16 years of covering mining and mineral exploration, Shane has become renowned for his ability to report on the sector in a way that is technically sound enough to inform industry insiders while being easy to understand by a wider audience.

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