Green Battery Minerals (TSX-V:GEM) is fielding interest from multiple undisclosed Australian companies keen to establish a potential joint venture (JV) partnership as the company advances its projects in Quebec towards production.
Speaking to Mining.com.au on the sidelines of the International Mining and Resources Conference (IMARC) in Sydney, Corporate Development Representative Jack Yingling says while no firm plans have been made regarding any JV agreements, the company is open to the various options being presented.
Yingling tells this news service the interested third parties have expressed interest in both Green Battery Minerals’ Berkwood Graphite and Jupiter Lithium projects in Canada.
“This (potential) JV would be for both our graphite and lithium projects in Quebec as our proven resource of 550,000 contained tonnes of graphite is in northern Quebec and our lithium property is in James Bay just southwest of Patriot [Battery] Metals.
We are speaking to multiple different parties so we will see if anything comes from it.”
While Green Battery Minerals has not retained corporate or financial advisors to assist in the JV talks, Yingling says the company is interested in hearing from all parties.
Meanwhile, Yingling notes that the company remains open to listing on the ASX at some stage, having already assessed the option.
“We are interested in listing on the ASX, however, the upfront cost was too much initially and we felt like we’re better off investing the cost that would have been spent on getting us on the ASX into the ground and expanding our resource.”
However, he says one of the main reasons for attending IMARC in Sydney is accessing relevant stakeholders in Australia, which “is a good trade partner of ours and we would love to work with Australians and do business”.
“The demand for graphite and lithium is only going to increase. We need 97 new graphite mines by 2035 as per benchmark minerals and these 97 new mines is the demand only met for EV cars, we are going to need more for the existing graphite uses separate from EVs. However, this was before China banned exports, I am sure that number has likely increased.
In Australia we are looking for a variety of hard dollar and ‘scrip’ to raise money here to expand the graphite resource and do more drilling on Zone 3 (Berkwood).
We are hoping to move forward with getting our Property Economic Assessment so we can start expanding our resource, and hopefully get into production much like our neighbour Nouveau Monde.
Based on our projections, if we were able to get C$10-12 million cash today and no unforeseen circumstances occur, we could likely be at a PEA production stage in 2 years.”
While attending IMARC, the company and Volt Carbon Technologies (TSXV:VCT) on 1 November announced they had encountered graphitic carbon grades of up to 71% from air separation of a bulk sample collected from its Berkwood property.
To date, 200kg of graphitic rock from the Berkwood property has been processed. The graphite concentrate samples produced are now being sent to prospective customers looking to secure anode-quality graphite in a market that has stepped up significantly with close to US$100 billion in investments committed to building new battery capacity in North America.
Write to Adam Drought at Mining.com.au
Images: Green Battery Minerals
