Visit I just got back from a visit to Alabama Graphite's Sylacauga, AL office and the Coosa County property. The whole thing was extremely interesting. I met with Daniel Spine and Jesse Edmondson, who is the on site Project Geologist. A lot of what I saw and heard confirmed what I already knew. However, it was interesting to see the samples that they have and the actual places where they have done the sampling. As we have heard before, the property has existing roads, which are for the most part maintained by the county. If the PEA comes out well, they would expect help from the state in widening and leveling the roads. The PEA will be based on only about 5% of the leased property, although they believe that they have much more graphite which will be explored and developed over time. They both say that they expect the PEA to be done before the end of November.
One thing which I have not heard before is that they will have some of the graphite processed and packaged. They will, then, send the samples to potential customers. They also talked about testing the suitability of the samples, after processing, for use in batteries. The most interesting thing about the actual site to me was that one could see the graphite at ground level in areas that were exposed. Most of the property is covered by heavy vegetation and trees. If one were producing, relatively small areas would have to be cleared. They did not offer any opinions about what the PEA would reveal, but they appeared to be very optimistic.
They talked a lot about the advantages of the location. I grew up in Alabama and can say with certainty that the locale in Coosa County has many advantages. It is reasonably close to I-65 and I-20. There are basically no jobs locally, and prevailing wages are low. However, workers could easily commute from Sylacauga and Alex City. The property is convenient but fairly far away from any neighbors who might be annoyed. As many other people have said, Alabama is very business friendly, has a large number of car manufacturers, and very accomodating administrators. They have already gotten lots of local help and expect much more, once they are ready to go.
fsamford