Source: Bob Moriarty for The Gold Report 04/13/2017
For Bob Moriarty of 321 Gold, the boom in demand for lithium ion batteries also means a boom in demand for graphite, and he is placing his bets on a junior he believes has nothing but blue sky ahead.
A lithium ion battery is no more lithium than 6 k gold is really gold. Regulations require gold be the major component of jewelry to be called gold. 6 k gold is really copper and silver, not gold. Same same with batteries, a lithium battery increases the demand for graphite a lot more than it does for lithium. What is called a lithium ion battery contains 10–20 times more graphite than lithium. So a boom in lithium battery requirement is really a boom in graphite demand.
Maybe we should start calling them graphite batteries with a little bit of lithium?
But both the demand and price of graphite have shot up in recent years with the increase in demand for battery storage. A couple of years ago there were probably seventy-five Canadian juniors all claiming to be the next big thing in graphite. Alas, cold hard economics stopped most of them in their tracks. Canada has some great hard rock graphite projects but they all require a lot of money to get into production. With China being the world’s biggest supplier of graphite, they are quite willing to dump graphite at a moment’s notice. Those who fund mining projects want stable prices more than high prices.
Recently I got an interesting email from the president of a budding graphite company. He sent some facts on the company and his presentation. When I opened the file and read …read more