Flinders Resources (CVE:FDR) Flinders Resources Limited has launched the second stage of its strategy to become a leading supplier of graphite to the rapidly expanding lithium ion battery energy storage market.
Flinders operates one of the few flake graphite mines in Europe it is the only western producer of this mineral. The company resumed production at its Woxna mine in 2014 in order to address graphite demand from Germany.
"…Flinders is uniquely placed to take a leading role in the supply of high-purity graphite as required by the lithium ion battery market. With a business model based on production, not just promise, we are now able to execute Stage 2 and focus on supplying ultra-high purity graphite concentrate into the plus $10B synthetic graphite market. Previous testwork lead to permitting in 2001 of a high purity (99.9%) graphite plant at the Woxna site, giving us cause for optimism in the commercial applicability of this business model," said Flinders’ president and CEO, Blair Way.
In 2001, Boliden Contech, a Swedish technical consultancy, designed a flow sheet to produce 99.9%, or higher, ultra-high purity graphite concentrate from Woxna. The Angstrom Laboratory at Uppsala University’s materials chemistry department noted excellent results for battery applications after testing jet-milled Woxna concentrate.
Flinders is improving the 2001 high purity flow sheet, sending fresh concentrate samples to laboratories for test work to verify the 2001 design, while the company is in conversation with various technology providers.
Design refinement at Woxna is targeting modernisation to increase economics and reduce environmental impact.
Flinders owns all the research and historic economic studies related to this high purity project, allowing it to accelerate the development of a suitable modern flow sheet towards production of value-added graphite.
The lab found that Woxna’s flake graphite performed well as the anode in lithium-ion batteries with high discharge capacity and packing density. Flinders said that these results prompted the environmental permitting of a high-purity processing plant in 2001, leading to the partial construction of a high-purity plant at the Woxna site.
Fourteen years later, global interest in lithium-ion batteries, which contain much more graphite than lithium despite the name, has never been higher.
The launch by Tesla Motors founder Elon Musk of a home and industrial based renewable energy storage systems using a lithium ion battery, known as Powerwall and Powerpack respectively, has stimulated further interest in the technology and the materials it demands. Graphite is essential.
The European Commission’s Department of Enterprise and Industry has described graphite as a “critical” material. Graphite, meanwhile, is needed to make the anodes of the batteries powering the electric cars of the present and, even more so, the future.
Lithium-ion batteries that need high purity flake graphite.
In April, Flinders almost tripled flake graphite mineral resources at the Company's 100% owned Woxna graphite project in Sweden according to a NI 43-101 technical report.
Woxna's measured and indicated graphite resources are 7.7 million tonnes at 9.3% Cg increasing from 2.8 million tonnes at 10.7% Cg thanks to the additions.
The expanded mineral resource, all of which located within fully granted Mining Leases, within the vicinity of the operational Woxna graphite mine, included for the first time two 100%-owned flake graphite deposits at Gropabo and Mattsmyra, adding to the previously announced resource at the Kringelgruvan mining lease.
The Woxna project covers four separate mining concessions.