With the electric vehicle market accelerating, investors may want to pay close attention to the graphite market. “We're now projecting that by the end of next year, batteries will be the number one leading market for graphite,” says Andrew Miller, chief operating officer at Benchmark Mineral Intelligence, as quoted by InvestingNews.com. “So, this is a turning point for the industry.” In addition, to meet rising demand, Benchmark Mineral Intelligence estimates that up to 150 new operations across natural and synthetic graphite are needed by 2035. That’s creating big opportunity for natural graphite companies, such as Infinity Stone Ventures Corp. (CSE: GEMS) (OTC: GEMSF), Graphite One Inc. (TSXV: GPH) (OTCQX: GPHOF), NextSource Materials Inc. (TSX: NEXT) (OTC: NSRCF). It would be beneficial for vehicle stocks, like Tesla (NASDAQ: TSLA), and Volkswagen (OTC: VWAPY), as well.
In fact, Volkswagen and its battery company PowerCo just chose St. Thomas in Ontario, Canada to establish Volkswagen’s first overseas gigafactory for cell manufacturing, which will produce sustainable unified cells. That, according to Zayn Kalyan, CEO and Director of Infinity Stone, “supports the growing demand for domestically mined graphite,” which Infinity’s Rockstone Graphite Project is strategically positioned to meet given its geographic location near infrastructure and easy shipping routes to the VW plant.
Infinity Stone Ventures Corp. (CSE: GEMS) (OTC: GEMSF)
Infinity Stone Ventures Corp. announced the formation of a new wholly-owned subsidiary, AirCarbon Technology Corp., to develop the Rockstone Graphite Project. The Company has also entered into a partnership with R&D Innovation Inc. to use their patent-pending and proprietary air classification separation technology to process samples from the Rockstone Graphite Project. The Air Classification System eliminates the need for flotation, chemicals and drying in the graphite milling process and greatly reduces the capital costs for a traditional graphite mill. It has also been designed to eliminate the need for tailing ponds and greatly lessen the need for significant infrastructure at a mine site.
Robert Rice, President of R&D Innovations Inc., commented, “I believe that Infinity Stone’s Rockstone material has the right geological make up for a very successful test run of our Air Classification System. Over the years, we have come to understand where there are specific challenges with certain graphite deposits, and where there is hard rock graphite material that works well with dry air classification methods.”
Following the initial pilot run of R&D Innovation’s Air Classification System on Rockstone samples, the Company intends to engage the NEI Corporation Inc. for coin cell testing and full material characterization of the Rockstone material. The testing will cover both traditional floated and chemically treated air classified material.
The Company intends to transfer the Rockstone Graphite Project to AirCarbon, following which management intends to pursue a public listing of AirCarbon on a Canadian securities exchange in the coming months. The Company intends to provide further details on the spin-out structure in the immediate future. Through the transfer, AirCarbon will become party to the current option agreement for the Rockstone Graphite Project and responsible for all further obligations under the Option Agreement.
“We firmly believe that graphite is being overlooked in the market, considering its critical position in the battery metal supply chain. The recent announcement by Volkswagen of its subsidiary PowerCo SE, opening its first overseas Gigafactory in St. Thomas, Ontario supports the growing demand for domestically mined graphite. Rockstone is strategically positioned to meet this demand given its geographic location near infrastructure and easy shipping routes to the VW new battery plant”, said Zayn Kalyan, CEO and Director of Infinity Stone. “We are excited to be working with the team at R&D Innovation to process samples from Rockstone, a step that we believe has the potential to rapidly increase the development of the project”, further stated Mr. Kalyan.
About the Rockstone Graphite Project
The Rockstone Graphite Project is located 45 km west of the seaway port at the City of Thunder Bay, Ontario Canada. The Project has excellent access by logging haul roads that connect to paved/gravel roads with nearby railways and a shipping port. Based upon the reprocessed Versatile Time Domain Electromagnetic (VTEM) survey completed by Sabina Silver Corporation in 2007, there are 18 drill-ready electromagnetic targets. Greencastle’s drilling in 2012 consisted of 4 diamond drillholes (916 metres). Diamond drill hole GC-12-01 intersected a 24 metre interval averaging 0.82% zinc and 0.15% copper within a graphitic argillite unit. Analysis of the pulps for the 24 metres returned a value of 25% Cg (graphitic carbon) using a LECO analytical procedure. Rockstone graphite morphology appears to be highly-ordered hexagonal graphite crystallites and crystallite agglomerates, likely formed by hydrothermal activity at a formation temperature of 702C.
Other related developments from around the markets include:
Volkswagen just announced that it is stepping up its activities in North America in a bid to take a strong position in this important growth market for battery electric vehicles. The Group and its battery company PowerCo have selected St. Thomas in Ontario, Canada to establish Volkswagen’s first overseas gigafactory for cell manufacturing, which will produce sustainable unified cells, start of production is planned for 2027. The decision to expand the PowerCo cell production ramp-up from Europe to Canada is further proof of the ambitious growth strategy of the Group in North America.
Graphite One Inc. is planning a complete domestic U.S. supply chain for advanced graphite materials, is pleased to announce drill results from its 2022 Field Program at its Graphite Creek Property, located in the Kigluaik Mountains on the Seward Peninsula approximately 60 kilometers (37 miles) north of Nome, Alaska. Graphite Creek is living up to its designation by the US Geological Survey as the largest and highest grade graphite resource in the United States.
Conducted from June to September 2022, the field program was comprised of increasing the field camp capacity, completing key environmental baseline studies, and drilling 1,940 meters of core for resource definition as well as 210 meters of geotechnical drilling for mill site and tailing area determination.
NextSource Materials Inc. announced that construction of the processing plant and mining camp for the Company’s Molo Graphite Mine in Madagascar is now complete, and that the entire mining fleet is at site. President and CEO, Craig Scherba, commented: “We are now entering the final stages of development of Phase 1 and are fast approaching first production. We look forward to providing a more detailed update as we progress through commissioning.” Electrical interconnections between plant modules are in progress, which will be followed by commissioning and the start of mining activities. Plant commissioning will be followed by a ramp up period of up to three months prior to achieving commercial production.
Tesla announced that in the fourth quarter, it produced over 439,000 vehicles and delivered over 405,000 vehicles. In 2022, vehicle deliveries grew 40% YoY to 1.31 million while production grew 47% YoY to 1.37 million. The company also continued to transition towards a more even regional mix of vehicle builds which again led to a further increase in cars in transit at the end of the quarter.
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