The Triumverate When I talked with Mr. Eveleigh last week in Toronto at the Graphite Express Conference he let it slip that Cliffs were coming up that night to meet with him. They were staying over, for talks the next day before Aubrey was to travel on to NYC.
Cliffs doesn't just drop in to Toronto on a tourist visa. They need a darn good reason to travel to Donald Trump's northern playpen.
The subject of Cliffs and their involvement in ZEN's graphite project had been a point of discussion ever since I had first brought up the subject with Aubrey weeks earlier, in reflection of the clause in the Option Agreement which allows Cliffs to virtually take the project over once the conditions to allow them to do so had been satisfied. This option is black and white, it's either assume full control or leave things as they are. There is little middle ground. And, the conditions have been now met. The meeting Thursday morning was to hammer out the next step.
Our first conversation on the subject impressed me with this: that while Cliffs had full right to do so upon $10M in exploration costs on ZEN's part, Mr. Eveleigh cautioned that he felt they would not exercise this right. As Ironman points out and Aubrey has intimated, Cliffs are not graphite miners. And, as further underscored by Aubrey, Cliffs and ZEN go way back, and they will go way forward together into the future, on the other properties to the north. It is important to not underestimate what ZEN brings to the table on this deal either, whether it be by way of adept and professional handling of aboriginal issues, all the way through to an innate understanding of the JV subject properties, all of them.
When I met Aubrey last week he was as relaxed and confident as any man would be who understands his immediate future and was looking forward to it. I inquired of him, in a matter of round about way, on the subject of this future and if he was looking forward to being able to start work on the other polymetallic properties to the north that Cliffs also has options on. His reply was 'our immediate and only concern, and the one that consumes us, is the graphite play and taking that to its full developmental conclusion'.
I then offered that many people do not fully comprehend the power of The Triumvirate that forms the exploration team focused on the ZEN graphite play... including Aubrey's people, Cliffs Natural Resources and Thani Emirates Resource Holdings out of Dubai led by trusted friend Brian Minty, the Bank. He laughed lightly, agreeing, and then said that while not having earlier commented on my weeks old remark that ZEN's stock would be in the $2.50 - $5.00 range in short order, he now fully accepted the inevitability of same.
This is not the retort of someone who is on the eve of looking for another job.
I spoke at length with Sandra Lombardo, Mr. Eveleigh's personal assistant the next day, Thursday May. 03. She had wanted some photos I had taken of the GExC event involving ZEN, and was following up. I mentioned that I would have given anything to be a fly on the wall in ZEN's closed meeting with Cliff's that morning. She told me that they and she were all at dinner the night prior, and that it was a relaxed and happy event. She returned to TBay the next morning. When we spoke she was just about to call Mr. Eveleigh to discuss that event.
She then said that we could expect to get a PR from ZEN on Monday or Tuesday, that being today or tomorrow.
I think people who are consumed about the possibilities involving Cliffs here need to relax, as much as Aubrey is, and accept the truth about what is going on here. We shall be rewarded, all of us shareholders top down, and in short order, on this company's transcendence from mere junior to the ranks of singular holder of an unmatched world class holder of pure graphite in the thousands and thousands of tonnes, a graphite play 'unlike anything else on the globe' as Mr. Eveleigh put it so succinctly last Wednesday at the Conference in Toronto.
For those who would cast doubt on the ability of graphite to assume a new, powerful role in energy metals and minerals one need only to look at the opinions of informed pundits such as Chris Berry, Simon Moores and perhaps at one little play that consumes me also: my business partner, having returned May.03 from China tells me that he is being asked to fund a $5+M expansion to the production line of a proprietary nano-silicone graphite gel battery R&D company there, while they continue to develop new graphite intensive technologies focused on the storage and conversion of electrical energy. Our company is in the earliest stages of developing many new self sustaining stand alone devices that alter and store off the grid power for specialized use, including the powering of entire communities in remote and under serviced areas of the planet. All of these devices include the use of graphite. We play but a very small part in this surge.
Cal
