GREY:ABGPF - Post by User
Comment by
Realist2018on Jan 01, 2018 7:19pm
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Post# 27258082
RE:RE:RE:RE:RE:Realist2018
RE:RE:RE:RE:RE:Realist2018True, the graphite mines in Alabama operated when the US was at war and the US could not obtain the graphite it needed to manufacture steel. The US government was the sole buyer. During WWI, it paid 20 cents/lb to Alabama mines for flake graphite. Adjusted for inflation since 1918 that's $3.73/lb, or $8,200/tonne. Numbers like that are why you want the DoD as a customer!
5, 7 even 27 years are not unusual lives for a mine. However those years are very, to extremely, long times in the life of a technology company. To capitalize a low-grade mine to produce a product only “sold” to a self-owned value-added technology company seems like a risk Westwater doesn’t need to take.
I consider it better that Westwater hold Coosa as a hedge (against WW3 perhaps?) and use its precious capital instead to build only the PEA secondary processing facility to process readily available market graphite in order to take advantage of the window now open. That could be presented for financing with a normal Business Plan rather than with a costly, and time-consuming, NI43-101-type Feasibility Study.
Westwater can do that where Canadian-regulated CSPG could not, and I believe such an approach might be very interesting