Flinders Advances Key Initiatives at Its Woxna Graphite Plant in Sweden
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Flinders Resources Limited has provided an update on its two key initiatives to produce high purity spherical graphite and graphene to position its 100 percent owned Woxna graphite mine as a leading supplier to the current and future graphite and graphene industries.
“The past 12 months has been a challenging time in the resource sector and the graphite market has not been immune. Low graphite demand for the last 6 months has led to deflated prices. Nevertheless, with a tight control on our costs and a focus on value adding strategies, our initiatives provide cost effective means to grow our business and provide shareholders with a realistic vision for the future,” said Blair Way, president and CEO.
“With a production-ready, fully permitted graphite mine and processing facility, Flinders continues to maintain its position as the only graphite producer in the junior space that is positioned to react quickly to the anticipated increases in demand,” added Way.
The first initiative underway is the High Purity Graphite Project, which seeks to value add to its product stream via working with a strategic Chinese technology partner with a well-established design, build and operate capability in high purity graphite production. The second, the Swedish Graphene Project (Svenskt Grafen), a Swedish-government funded program to research and commercialize the production of graphene from Swedish-sourced Woxna graphite.
Product from the Woxna graphite plant in Sweden was shipped to the company’s Chinese technology supplier for detailed bench-scale test work to refine its existing high-purity flowsheet. The company’s Chinese engineering team has defined a process to upgrade Woxna graphite through standard acid alkali chemical purification techniques to battery grade graphite. Work is now underway to produce a larger quantity of high purity spherical graphite to commercial specifications, for end users to internally test for suitability in their battery manufacturing processes. Meetings with these consumers will take place during Q2 2016. A number of auto manufactures in the European Union (EU) are pursuing the development of electric vehicles more aggressively and the Woxna production facility is well positioned to be an integral part of the EU supply chain for battery manufacturing.
The second initiative is the Swedish Graphene Project, which falls under the EU Graphene Flagship Project, a ten-year, EUR1 billion (US$1.1B) project to research graphene commercialization. The project is investigating Woxna’s Swedish flake graphite, and its suitability to produce graphene on an industrial scale. The project is progressing well and it is anticipated that further updates will be provided in the coming months. Woxna, as one of Europe’s two graphite mines, and Sweden’s only graphite producer, can supply domestically sourced natural flake graphite which provides a clear strategic advantage for Sweden.
Flinders also remains in discussion with a number of industrial companies to explore synergies which may exist to help grow the business.
About Flinders Resources
Flinders Resources is the 100 percent owner of the Woxna graphite mine and processing facility located in Sweden. The fully permitted Woxna facility was restarted in July 2014 and produced natural flake graphite concentrate until spring 2015. Much of this concentrate inventory was stockpiled instead of sold due to declining global flake graphite demand during 2015 that pushed prices to a four year low. The Woxna processing facility can be restarted very quickly (a matter of days), but will remain in a “production ready” status until improved graphite prices return allowing the company to conserve working capital and work on value adding initiatives for the processing facility. Flinders Resources is exploring all available opportunities to enable value adding products and improving the business economics.
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