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scep

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brewm0re

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As today is an exciting one re: ANN permit hearing timeframes and the Webinar, here’s an article I stumbled online.


TLG is flagged as one of the top 13 global graphene players.

From a numbers’ perspective, which always piques my interest, the CAGR for graphene is expected to grow 30.5% from $337m to $2.172B by 2029.

One sentence could be related to AROSE (and TLG’s ‘other’ under-the-radar business activity and focus – being graphene), where it is: revolutionizing the aerospace industry as it improves the functionality of the coatings and composites used in planes, drones, helicopters, and spaceship manufacturing.

Whilst tech/science is not my forte at all (thus forgive my ignorance if it has no merit) --- another line I found of interest was when semiconductors were compared… “the electrons in this allotrope of carbon have higher mobility, and therefore speed up more when applied on an electric field, as compared to semiconductors that are extensively employed in electronic devices, including silicon. Owing to these properties, it produces more proficient devices that function faster than traditional substitutes while using less power”
 
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Gero

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10e7443a-1515-acd1-28dd-feb866ebe68b.png
Newsletter
4 November 2022

The Land and Environment Courtconducted sightings at Nunasvaara South

828448c4-2987-5574-d540-6b93776d9626.jpg
People gather at Nunasvaara South
On September 26, the Land and Environment Court at Umeå District Court invited referral bodies and the general public for a so-called vision at Nunasvaara södra. The sight is part of the process of environmental permit application for the planned mining operations.

The purpose of the visit was to give the court an understanding of the place, and the day began in Vittangi at the People's House where the project was presented. After that, the visitors went up together to see the area on site at several points. Here, both Talga and the Sami villages could explain both the importance of the place and how it is used today. About a hundred people gathered for the sight.

The next formal step in the permit application is the so-called main negotiation, which is planned for the beginning of next year and where all stakeholders can have their say and present their views on the project. The main hearing is expected to take three to four weeks and the latest indications from the court suggest that this will happen starting in February 2023.

Test drilling shows link between Niska north and south

The results of the 2021 extensive test drilling campaignpresented in Maydemonstrated a completely new deposit, called Nunasvaara östra, and increased the total volume of all Vittangi deposits by as much as 54 percent. Since then, new test drilling campaigns have continued. One focus here has been to investigate whether the graphite deposit is pervasive between Niska north and south – as indicated when initial test drilling results were presented earlier this year.

New results have now been presented, where, after a drilling campaign with 36 boreholes, it is possible to further demonstrate how the Niska northern and southern deposits are connected. Below is an illustration of where the boreholes between the deposits are located. More detailed results can also be read in Englishhere.
b9580de9-f361-8286-0a80-69f2b57af24d.jpg

Non-binding offtake agreement with battery giant

Talga has entered into a non-binding offtake (Offtake Term Sheet) agreement with the European battery giant Automotive Cells Company (ACC). Under the agreement, Talga will supply ACC with a total of 60,000 tons of the anode material Talnode-C® within a five-year period. The parties have a legally binding obligation to make commercially reasonable efforts to complete due diligence and negotiate a binding offtake agreement by November 30, 2022.
ACC is co-owned by vehicle manufacturers Mercedes-Benz and Stellantis (a giant group including Alfa Romeo, Chrysler, Citroën, Fiat, Jeep, Peugeot and Maserati), as well as by battery company Saft (owned by energy giant TotalEnergies).

Read morehere.

Talga received visits from both major financial institutions and from the OECD

7c807f7c-35ff-053a-aae6-145c55a40e45.jpg
Financial institutions visiting. On the left at EVA in Luleå and on the right at test mining in Vittangi.
The interest in Talga's anode project is great both from the market and society, and during the autumn several dignitaries have come to visit the business on site and gain an increased understanding of how the project can both be run and help meet goals for the rest of society.

A recent visit was by representatives from several public and commercial financial institutions. These were representatives from the European Investment Bank, the Swedish Export Credit Corporation, the Nordic Investment Bank as well as a number of representatives from unnamed, commercial financing institutions and banks. The visit was also attended by Talga's financing experts from BurnVoir. During the first day of the visit, the participants got to see both the intended mining area in Nunasvaara, as well as the ongoing test mining in Niska. On day two, they visited the EVA test facility in Luleå.

The visit follows ongoing dialogues and declarations of interest from several institutes, which can be read more abouthere.
OECD's Swedish delegation visited EVA
a7f58571-5e57-5b53-1eac-7ec0971c7d27.jpg
OECD delegation to Talga
The Swedish OECD delegation sits together with the Ministry of Finance and conducts a so-called fact-finding missionfor the OECD Secretariat, ahead of their work on the next version of the reportEconomic Survey of Sweden. As part of this, they recently visited Talga's anode qualification facility EVA in Luleå.

The purpose of the OECD's mission is to meet with various actors (including the Government Offices, authorities, social partners, business) and get a basis for the next report, which is planned for 2023 and which is intended to contain an in-depth chapter with the theme of climate.
During the visit, Talga was able to talk both about the great opportunities but also challenges that exist for the development of a new green industrial era in northern Sweden.

We look forward to the next report!

 
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scep

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I like it that Eric M Runesson, Justice of the Supreme Court of Sweden, Chair of the Committee on Reindeer Lands
is attending this summit(y)


Climate change starts in the mine. The Swedish mine. Welcome to celebrate with us. Svemin's autumn meeting 2022.​

Svemin offers a full day filled with the latest from the industry, politics and academia. There will be a lot of talk about Sweden's new political game plan, the EU's upcoming Raw Materials Initiative, international outlook and, of course, a place to meet industry professionals.
On the speaker list
  • Ebba Busch, Minister of Energy and Industry
  • Erik D. Ramanathan, US Ambassador to Sweden
  • Jason LaTorre, Canada's Ambassador to Sweden
  • Bernard Philip, Australia's Ambassador to Sweden
  • Tucapel Jiménez, Chile's Ambassador to Sweden
  • Anneli Wirtén, Director General SGU
  • Björn Risinger, Director General of the Swedish Environmental Protection Agency
  • Robert Andrén, Director General of the Swedish Energy Agency
  • Jakob Granit, Director General of the Norwegian Sea and Water Authority
  • Eric M Runesson, Justice Council HD, chairman. The Reinmarks Committee
  • Hans Pehrson, Responsible for Polestar 0 Project, Polestar
  • Ulla Sandborgh, CEO of Jokkmokk Iron Mines
  • Anna Tyni, vd Copperstone Resources
  • Helena Hedblom, CEO Epiroc
  • Mikael Staffas, CEO of Boliden
  • Jan Moström, CEO LKAB
  • Rolf Kuby, Director General, Euromines
  • Catharina Elmsäter-Svärd, CEO of Byggföretagen
  • Johannes Malminen, Research Leader Defense Analysis, FOI
What: Svemin's Autumn Meeting 2022
When: Tuesday 22 November
Where: Pelarsalen, Norra Latin, Barnhusgatan 7B / Drottninggatan 71B, Stockholm
Time: 09.30 - 16.30, coffee from 08.30. Mingle starts at 16.30. Dinner 19.00.
Format : Live. Session 2 is also broadcast live on Svemin's YouTube channel.
Language: Swedish and English (session 2).
Price: Conference free of charge, dinner SEK 1000 ex. VAT, invoiced afterwards
Registration closes 8 November, 12.00.

The green transition starts in the mine. The Swedish mine. Welcome to celebrate with us. Svemin's Autumn Summit 2022.

Svemin offers a full day filled with the latest from the industry, politics and academia. There will be a lot of talk about Sweden's new political landscape, the EU's upcoming Raw Materials Initiative, international outlook, and of course, the opportunity to meet industry professionals.

From the list of speakers
  • Ebba Busch, Swedish Minister for Energy, Business and Industry
  • Erik D. Ramanathan, U.S. Ambassador to Sweden
  • Jason LaTorre, Ambassador of Canada to Sweden
  • Bernard Philip, Australian Ambassador to Sweden
  • Tucapel Jimenez, Chilean Ambassador to Sweden
  • Anneli Wirtén, Director General, Geological Survey of Sweden
  • Björn Risinger, Director General, The Swedish Environmental Protection Agency
  • Robert Andrén, Director General, Swedish Energy Agency
  • Jakob Granit, Director General, Swedish Agency for Marine and Water Management
  • Eric M Runesson, Justice of the Supreme Court of Sweden, Chair of the Committee on Reindeer Lands
  • Hans Pehrson, Head of Polestar 0 Project, Polestar
  • Ulla Sandborgh, CEO Jokkmokk Iron Mines
  • Anna Tyni, CEO Copperstone Resources
  • Helena Hedblom, CEO Epiroc
  • Mikael Staffas, CEO Boliden
  • Jan Moström, CEO LKAB
  • Rolf Kuby, Director General, Euromines
  • Catharina Elmsäter-Svärd, CEO the Swedish Construction Federation
  • Johannes Malminen, Deputy Head, Swedish Defence Research Agency, FOI
What: Svemin's Autumn Summit 2022
When: Tuesday Nov. 22
Where: Pelarsalen, Norra Latin, Barnhusgatan 7B / Drottninggatan 71B, Stockholm
Time: 09.30 - 16.30, coffee from 08.30. Mingle starts 16.30. Dinner 19.00.
Format: Live. Session 2 is also broadcast live on Svemin's Youtube
Language: Swedish and English (session 2)
Fee: Summit free of charge, dinner SEK 1000 ex. VAT, invoiced afterwards
Photo: Ebba Busch; Ninni Andersson/Government Office, Erik D. Ramanathan; se.usembassy.gov, Jason LaTorre; international.gc.ca, Bernard Philip; dfat.gov.au, Tucapel Jiménez; chile.gob.cl, Anneli Wirtén; SGU/Johan Wahlgren, Björn Risinger; The Swedish Environmental Protection Agency, Robert Andrén; Adam af Ekenstam, Jakob Granit; havochvatten.se, Helena Hedblom; epirocgroup.com, Jan Moström; Fredric Alm, Mikael Staffas; Svemin, Ulla Sandborgh; twitter.com/BeowulfMining, Rolf Kuby; euromines.org, Catharina Elmsäter-Svärd; byggforetagen.se, Maria Sunér; The swam
 

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scep

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Very well timed for Talga and also an interesting location of this Rho Motion seminar.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The first speakers for Rho Motion's Q4 Seminar Series, taking place on 1st December in Paris, have now been announced.

We will be hearing from ABB, Blue Solutions, BMO Capital Markets, Echion Technologies, InnoEnergy, Norsk Hydro, Pala Investments, Talga, Verkor.

The full agenda will be released in the coming weeks.

We would be delighted if you could join us in person for this event. Click the button below to register your interest in attending.
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Gero

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Semmel

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Cool to see Mark being back in Europe :) He mirrored the image... Guess he likes this angle on his face better :)
 
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Gero

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Talga's European CEO Martin Phillips presentation from 16.20
 
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Gero

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Graphite poised to do a lithium​

Frik Els | November 23, 2022 | 11:42 am Battery Metals Markets Africa Australia Canada China Europe USA Cobalt Graphite Lithium Manganese Nickel
Pressure on carmakers in the EV battery supply chain is only building.
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Original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) faced with an 8-fold increase in lithium prices, convulsions on the nickel market and ever-present worries about cobalt supply from the Congo, are being forced to look downstream to secure supply for their ambitious expansion plans.
Andy Miller, chief operating officer of Benchmark Mineral Intelligence, told an annual industry gathering in Los Angeles last week that soaring lithium prices and LME nickel market turmoil are signs of the huge momentum that is building in the battery supply chain.
Graphite prices poised to do a lithium
Andy Miller, COO Benchmark Mineral Intelligence presenting at BenchmarkWeek2022 in Los Angeles.
“The events of the past 12 months are just the warning signs of what is to come across the raw material markets,” Miller said.
“All of this is being compounded by what is happening now at the policy level.
“It is no exaggeration to say that there is no bigger regulatory milestone for Western electric car markets than the Inflation Reduction Act, which has far-reaching consequences for all aspects of the energy transition.
“The impact goes well beyond US markets and will shape global trade as the EV supply chain is being built out,” he said.
Trading at a fraction of the prices of nickel, cobalt and high-purity manganese, anode material graphite is an often overlooked part of the EV supply chain.
In contrast to ternary cathode materials, graphite prices have drifted lower this year thanks to weakness in the steel industry, although there have been wide disparities between grades.
According to Benchmark’s Flake Graphite Price Assessment for October, China FOB 94-95% purity -100 Mesh sizes are up 31% over the past year, last trading at $765 a tonne while +100 Mesh prices have hardly moved over the same period to exchange hands for $890 a tonne. Benchmark also tracks the price of value added products such as uncoated spherical graphite (99.95%, 15 micron) which has risen by 10% in 2022 to average $3,065 a tonne.
graphite-demand-by-end-use.jpg
Source: Via BenchmarkWeek2022
Both the mined and synthetic graphite market is at a turning point, said Miller.
Batteries became more than 50% of the cobalt market back in 2016 and the same happened for lithium in 2018, Miller said, and according to Benchmark analysis next year lithium-ion batteries will overtake the steel industry as the number one source of demand for graphite.
Benchmark sees demand for graphite over the next decade growing at an annual compound rate of 10.5% but supply will lag, expanding at only 5.7% per annum, despite a trend of supply diversification, particularly new mining projects coming in stream in Africa.
This year refractories and foundries will still dominate demand, but by 2025, the battery industry is set to consume two thirds of the world’s flake graphite, increasing to 79% in 2030, according to Benchmark’s Natural Flake Graphite Forecast.
Graphite prices poised to do a lithium
Source: Via BenchmarkWeek2022

Weighty matter​

The battery can make up 20% to 25% of the total cost of an EV and as the overall cost of batteries has come down, the bill of materials now equals roughly 70% of the cost of a cell.
And while the cathode is the most expensive component responsible for 50% of materials cost in a cell and another roughly 25% for other materials including separators, casings and electrolytes, by weight graphite constitutes 45% or more of the cell.
Miller told the BenchmarkWeek2022 conference held in person for the first time post-pandemic, given the tonnage of graphite required, why the industry has not seen the surge and prices or market disruptions in anode feedstock similar to that experienced in cathode material market:
“The fundamental reason is that graphite is starting from a much larger supply base and batteries have not yet become the dominant force.
“Up to now this flexible capacity has allowed the industry to respond pretty quickly to surges in demand.
“Through the mid-2020s we see an increasingly finely balanced graphite market, but if you look towards the end of the decade both synthetic and natural graphite face serious structural issues and significant supply deficit.”

Grafting onto graphite​

graphite-market-balance-benchmarkweek-2022.jpg
Via BenchmarkWeek2022
Miller says given the long lead times for the extractive side of the graphite industry, to supply the coming deficit, the industry will have to start developing new mines ”today” and points out that most of the new mines will not be coming online at the shallow end of the cost curve.
At the average size of graphite mines of 56,000 tonnes per annum, the industry needs some 97 new mines and 52 new synthetic plants (average 57ktpa) to meet 2035 demand.
That’s not taking into account recycling, but the secondary market in graphite is not predicted to play a major role through this time frame given its lower value compared to cathode materials. The number of mines needed is also more than that for lithium (59), cobalt (62) and nickel (72).
Benchmark estimates global this year’s flake graphite supply of roughly 1.5m tonnes will double by 2027 driven by new mines and expansions in Tanzania, Mozambique, Madagascar and Namibia.

OEMs swimming upstream​

Miller says auto manufacturers are waking up to the importance of the anode side of the supply chain.
flake-graphite-supply.jpg
Via BenchmarkWeek2022
Over the last 12 months a number of OEMs have made direct purchase agreements with graphite developers, including Tesla and Syrah Resources which operates the Balama mine in Mozambique, General Motors and Korea’s Posco (2024 onwards) and both Daimler and Stellantis with Talga Group, owners of the Vittangi graphite mine in Sweden. Quebec-based Nouveau Monde Graphite earlier this month signed a partnership and off-take agreement with Panasonic, Tesla’s main supplier.

Chinese control​

China has a firm grip on the lithium, cobalt and nickel supply chain, but its dominance in graphite is even greater.
China boasts around 30 of the 45 mines in operation around the world. The country supplies 64% of the world’s natural graphite and 55% of the world’s needle coke, a derivative of crude oil and coal tar and a precursor for synthetic graphite anodes.
Overall, synthetic graphite output is 68% Chinese while the country supplies a full 90% of the world’s anodes.
For uncoated spherical graphite which (99.95% purity), China is in charge of 100% of the world’s production with the bulk coming from Heilongjiang province. Even ten years out some four-fifths of this market will still be controlled by China, according to Benchmark forecasts.
While synthetic anodes are currently more sought after by carmakers because they improve charging times and battery life, natural graphite-heavy anodes will find favour in future, boosted also by the increasing addition of silicon to anode chemistries.
Benchmark forecasts natural graphite anode demand to grow by more than 400% by the end of the decade versus 170% for synthetic. Alternative anodes including silicon, lithium titanate (LTO) and mesocarbon microbeads (MCMB) will gain market share but graphite will still make up more than 80% of the market by 2040, according to Benchmark.

Synthetic emissions​

Demand for natural graphite is set to overtake synthetic before the end of the decade because of carmakers’ worries about the environmental impact of the latter, the need to cut costs and to diversify the supply base away from China.
On a CO2 per kilogram of graphite anode basis, natural graphite production in China is half that of synthetic production across the country. And when compared to synthetic graphite production in Inner Mongolia, which relies almost exclusively on coal fired power plants, the emissions rise to more than three times as much as natural graphite.
anode-market-share-2040.jpg
Via BenchmarkWeek2022
Underinvestment by the oil industry also means no new needle coke plants have been built for decades in the US. At the same time, China has become a net importer of graphite to feed its battery supply chain and Benchmark notes greater involvement by Beijing, local governments and state-owned enterprises in the industry, including policy and financial incentives for new mines and plants.


 
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Gero

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ACinEur

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Great find, the comments on Europe, Financing, and Supply are very pertinent…
 
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TentCity

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Another timely reminder from Simon Moores how exposed Auto OEMs are to a shortage of critical minerals to meet their projected battery cell manufacturing targets. Simon has been consistently saying for at least 6+ months that Auto OEMs will need to vertically integrate upstream to the mine level to ensure security of supply.

This is why it would be shortsighted to rush the ACC binding offtake deal, which accounts for 60% of initial production to not position the company to benefit from this potential upside. This also extends to discussions around ‘strategic partners’ to invest in the project with multiple references to Auto OEMs being some of the interested parties negotiating behind the scenes.

Talga’s graphite deposits are an incredibly strategic and valuable resource to Europe’s decarbonisation ambitions over the next few decades and will eventually be valued accordingly if management/investors don’t panic and sell off prematurely.
 
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Major article appearing today in Australia's premier daily financial newspaper The Australian Financial Review. This is great publicity

Why a Perth resources play has bet on batteries in the Arctic Circle

Hans van Leeuwen Europe correspondent
Dec 5, 2022 – 8.10am

In the back blocks of the remote northern Swedish town of Lulea, in an unremarkable shed, a posse of Australian-backed engineers and scientists is cooking something up.Their modest factory bears no resemblance to the chaotic kitchen of The Muppet Show’s Swedish chef. Except that there’s a gadget that looks like a super-complicated kettle, and one resembles a giant mixer, and something that looks like a row of microwave ovens, feeding into a large kiln. He would probably feel right at home.Talga Resources staff make anode materials for batteries at the demonstration plant in Lulea, northern Sweden.

The demonstration plant, run by Perth-based ASX minnow Talga Group, isn’t producing anything remotely edible, of course. But the product it is dishing up – graphite anode materials for batteries – has European carmakers salivating.Sales of electric vehicles (EVs) rose 65 per cent in Europe last year. The EU has set a 2035 target to phase out the internal combustion engine, so the potential growth trajectory is exponential.Worldwide demand for batteries will surge 30 per cent a year this decade, McKinsey’s reckons, and the battery value chain’s size will increase tenfold by 2030.
That’s already leading to a scramble for all the commodities and components that go into making batteries. But in Europe, where more than a quarter of EVs are made, the problem is particularly acute.European drivers want cars with a supply chain that is as near to net-zero carbon emissions as possible – so for the carmakers, only some batteries will do.And European governments want supply chains that are no longer reliant on China – from where some 85 per cent of the world’s battery anodes and 70 per cent of cathodes now originate.

This is where Talga, headed by affable managing director Mark Thompson, comes in. They want to make anode battery material in Europe, with greenly extracted graphite. And they want to move fast but – unlike the Swedish chef – without breaking things.Talga’s demonstration plant, in the back blocks of Lulea. “A lot of people don’t realise just how much graphite there is in a battery. The graphite in the anode is the largest single mineral in the battery,” he says.“We just thought it was essentially a no-brainer that Europe was going to need its own supply of graphite anode. And that’s what we’ve started doing, and we’re scaling up fast.”

The graphite will come from Talga’s own Swedish mine in the pine forests of Vittangi, right up in the Arctic Circle. This gets Talga’s product over the first European hurdle: the need for a local supply chain.Talga’s test graphite mine in Vittangi, in Sweden’s far north. And it’s also green: rather than relying on carbon-intensive synthetic graphite, the mine yields graphite in its natural form. And because the region has abundant hydropower, the mine can operate on renewable energy.With that confluence of factors, Thompson reckons northern Sweden should be the “breadbasket of the battery industry”.

His initial mine will exploit a 1.2 kilometre-long, 200-metre deep ore body. It will produce 19,500 tonnes of graphite a year, eventually rising over the mine’s 24-year life to 100,000 tonnes a year.Permitting is expected in the first half of next year, but Talga has been operating a test mine.The graphite extracted so far – about one-quarter of a year’s supply – has been sent to Finland for crushing and grinding, then to Belgium for purification. The resulting fine powder then ends up at the demonstration plant in Lulea, which is actually only 280 kilometres south of Vittangi.Eventually the plan is to mill and concentrate the graphite at Vittangi itself, and send two truckloads a day down to Lulea for purification and anode production.
One size doesn’t fit all
At the Lulea demonstration plant, about a dozen people oversee a process in which Talga’s graphite is turned from flakes into rounded and coated particles that battery makers use in their anodes.The process is complex, but the economics are probably the trickiest part. If the company was just offering lithium, nickel or cobalt, that would essentially be one-size-fits-all. With graphite, though, the battery maker has to test and retest the material, to make sure it works with specific products.It has to be “the right shape, the right crystallinity, the right chemistry, the right performance, before it goes into a customer product”, Thompson says. And that takes time.Graphite isn’t like other commodities - buyers have to test the product extensively.

An anode materials producer like Talga will typically start off by sending a customer just a few kilograms, known as an “A sample”. If those check out, the customers will ask for a “B sample” of at least several hundred kilos, then a “C sample” of, say, a couple of tonnes or even several dozen tonnes.By this point the company and its customer are starting to get pretty committed. At “D sample” level, the customer is going into production with that material.“It’s an almost continuous scale of qualification, until you reach the level where they’re happy to go ahead. That’s why what we’ve done is maybe more of an achievement than gets recognised,” Thompson says.This makes financing difficult, too: you have to be making plenty of samples before you can get committed customers, known as offtakers; but you often need offtakers to get capital.Otherwise, you need lenders who understand the product – which wasn’t easy, until the battery boom got going.“It has been relatively challenging. But it is happening faster and faster now,” Thompson says.

After all, “batteries are the new oil”.Offtakers in the wings?Shareholders seem reasonably au fait with the story. The stock used to trade at about 70¢, but during the first boom in EV sales in 2020, the price went on a month-long tear that ended at $2.Its record high was $2.10 almost exactly a year ago, but it now trades at about $1.40, having shed about 16 per cent this year. That 2022 performance is roughly on a par with the L&G Battery Value Chain ETF.In the past week, there has been mixed news. The mining side of the project has passed preliminary screening for a potential European Investment Bank loan of €300 million ($465 million).But Talga missed a November 30 deadline to nail down its first binding offtake agreement for its flagship anode product, Talnode-C. That would have been a full-fat version of a September non-binding deal with ACC, a battery maker owned by Mercedes-Benz and Stellantis, which makes brands including Fiat, Peugeot and Chrysler.“Talga and ACC expect to finalise negotiations and definitive documentation shortly,” Talga said in an ASX statement last week. But it added a rider: “There can be no guarantee the documentation will be finalised.”

Thompson says Talga has “a bunch of other customers that are interested”, and the ABCD sample production process is “starting to mature now” with some of those. Assuming that the US Inflation Reduction Act and the rising costs of production in Europe don’t change the European battery industry’s dynamics, Talga hopes to have a commercial-scale plant operating in Lulea by late 2024.“We’ve got this really high-grade graphite deposit, we’ve proven that it can work in batteries, we’ve worked out the processing route, we’ve worked out how to make the final product so that you don’t have to send it to China and bring it back in again,” Thompson says.“And we made the real thing entirely within just a couple of days’ drive from Germany and France, where a lot of cars get built, and where batteries are going to get built as well.”Expansion plansTalga began life as a gold explorer, and first picked out the Swedish graphite opportunity in 2012. As this project slowly subsumed the company, is there any sense in which it retains an Aussie twang?“We are swapping over from that Australian equity market scene to a European project financed for European customers, which is the original intent and what it should be,” Thompson says.

But the bigger change to Talga’s identity could come as it expands its range of products and activities over time.The company is exploring partnerships in synthetic graphite, because European customers still want it – they just want it greener. It is also looking at deploying its graphite on the cathode side of the battery.And customers are showing an interest in a silicon anode, which can give the graphite an energy boost. “We are reviewing places where that could take place if that was to commercialise, including in the UK,” Thompson says.“If our assets and technology can work around the world in different ways, we’ll do that,” Thompson says. “But what we’re doing is already extremely ambitious and challenging. And we’re doing it into a world that doesn’t know much about it. So we’ve sort of got to walk before we can run.”
 
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cosors

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Major article appearing today in Australia's premier daily financial newspaper The Australian Financial Review. This is great publicity

Why a Perth resources play has bet on batteries in the Arctic Circle

Hans van Leeuwen Europe correspondent
Dec 5, 2022 – 8.10am

In the back blocks of the remote northern Swedish town of Lulea, in an unremarkable shed, a posse of Australian-backed engineers and scientists is cooking something up.Their modest factory bears no resemblance to the chaotic kitchen of The Muppet Show’s Swedish chef. Except that there’s a gadget that looks like a super-complicated kettle, and one resembles a giant mixer, and something that looks like a row of microwave ovens, feeding into a large kiln. He would probably feel right at home.Talga Resources staff make anode materials for batteries at the demonstration plant in Lulea, northern Sweden.

The demonstration plant, run by Perth-based ASX minnow Talga Group, isn’t producing anything remotely edible, of course. But the product it is dishing up – graphite anode materials for batteries – has European carmakers salivating.Sales of electric vehicles (EVs) rose 65 per cent in Europe last year. The EU has set a 2035 target to phase out the internal combustion engine, so the potential growth trajectory is exponential.Worldwide demand for batteries will surge 30 per cent a year this decade, McKinsey’s reckons, and the battery value chain’s size will increase tenfold by 2030.
That’s already leading to a scramble for all the commodities and components that go into making batteries. But in Europe, where more than a quarter of EVs are made, the problem is particularly acute.European drivers want cars with a supply chain that is as near to net-zero carbon emissions as possible – so for the carmakers, only some batteries will do.And European governments want supply chains that are no longer reliant on China – from where some 85 per cent of the world’s battery anodes and 70 per cent of cathodes now originate.

This is where Talga, headed by affable managing director Mark Thompson, comes in. They want to make anode battery material in Europe, with greenly extracted graphite. And they want to move fast but – unlike the Swedish chef – without breaking things.Talga’s demonstration plant, in the back blocks of Lulea. “A lot of people don’t realise just how much graphite there is in a battery. The graphite in the anode is the largest single mineral in the battery,” he says.“We just thought it was essentially a no-brainer that Europe was going to need its own supply of graphite anode. And that’s what we’ve started doing, and we’re scaling up fast.”

The graphite will come from Talga’s own Swedish mine in the pine forests of Vittangi, right up in the Arctic Circle. This gets Talga’s product over the first European hurdle: the need for a local supply chain.Talga’s test graphite mine in Vittangi, in Sweden’s far north. And it’s also green: rather than relying on carbon-intensive synthetic graphite, the mine yields graphite in its natural form. And because the region has abundant hydropower, the mine can operate on renewable energy.With that confluence of factors, Thompson reckons northern Sweden should be the “breadbasket of the battery industry”.

His initial mine will exploit a 1.2 kilometre-long, 200-metre deep ore body. It will produce 19,500 tonnes of graphite a year, eventually rising over the mine’s 24-year life to 100,000 tonnes a year.Permitting is expected in the first half of next year, but Talga has been operating a test mine.The graphite extracted so far – about one-quarter of a year’s supply – has been sent to Finland for crushing and grinding, then to Belgium for purification. The resulting fine powder then ends up at the demonstration plant in Lulea, which is actually only 280 kilometres south of Vittangi.Eventually the plan is to mill and concentrate the graphite at Vittangi itself, and send two truckloads a day down to Lulea for purification and anode production.
One size doesn’t fit all
At the Lulea demonstration plant, about a dozen people oversee a process in which Talga’s graphite is turned from flakes into rounded and coated particles that battery makers use in their anodes.The process is complex, but the economics are probably the trickiest part. If the company was just offering lithium, nickel or cobalt, that would essentially be one-size-fits-all. With graphite, though, the battery maker has to test and retest the material, to make sure it works with specific products.It has to be “the right shape, the right crystallinity, the right chemistry, the right performance, before it goes into a customer product”, Thompson says. And that takes time.Graphite isn’t like other commodities - buyers have to test the product extensively.

An anode materials producer like Talga will typically start off by sending a customer just a few kilograms, known as an “A sample”. If those check out, the customers will ask for a “B sample” of at least several hundred kilos, then a “C sample” of, say, a couple of tonnes or even several dozen tonnes.By this point the company and its customer are starting to get pretty committed. At “D sample” level, the customer is going into production with that material.“It’s an almost continuous scale of qualification, until you reach the level where they’re happy to go ahead. That’s why what we’ve done is maybe more of an achievement than gets recognised,” Thompson says.This makes financing difficult, too: you have to be making plenty of samples before you can get committed customers, known as offtakers; but you often need offtakers to get capital.Otherwise, you need lenders who understand the product – which wasn’t easy, until the battery boom got going.“It has been relatively challenging. But it is happening faster and faster now,” Thompson says.

After all, “batteries are the new oil”.Offtakers in the wings?Shareholders seem reasonably au fait with the story. The stock used to trade at about 70¢, but during the first boom in EV sales in 2020, the price went on a month-long tear that ended at $2.Its record high was $2.10 almost exactly a year ago, but it now trades at about $1.40, having shed about 16 per cent this year. That 2022 performance is roughly on a par with the L&G Battery Value Chain ETF.In the past week, there has been mixed news. The mining side of the project has passed preliminary screening for a potential European Investment Bank loan of €300 million ($465 million).But Talga missed a November 30 deadline to nail down its first binding offtake agreement for its flagship anode product, Talnode-C. That would have been a full-fat version of a September non-binding deal with ACC, a battery maker owned by Mercedes-Benz and Stellantis, which makes brands including Fiat, Peugeot and Chrysler.“Talga and ACC expect to finalise negotiations and definitive documentation shortly,” Talga said in an ASX statement last week. But it added a rider: “There can be no guarantee the documentation will be finalised.”

Thompson says Talga has “a bunch of other customers that are interested”, and the ABCD sample production process is “starting to mature now” with some of those. Assuming that the US Inflation Reduction Act and the rising costs of production in Europe don’t change the European battery industry’s dynamics, Talga hopes to have a commercial-scale plant operating in Lulea by late 2024.“We’ve got this really high-grade graphite deposit, we’ve proven that it can work in batteries, we’ve worked out the processing route, we’ve worked out how to make the final product so that you don’t have to send it to China and bring it back in again,” Thompson says.“And we made the real thing entirely within just a couple of days’ drive from Germany and France, where a lot of cars get built, and where batteries are going to get built as well.”Expansion plansTalga began life as a gold explorer, and first picked out the Swedish graphite opportunity in 2012. As this project slowly subsumed the company, is there any sense in which it retains an Aussie twang?“We are swapping over from that Australian equity market scene to a European project financed for European customers, which is the original intent and what it should be,” Thompson says.

But the bigger change to Talga’s identity could come as it expands its range of products and activities over time.The company is exploring partnerships in synthetic graphite, because European customers still want it – they just want it greener. It is also looking at deploying its graphite on the cathode side of the battery.And customers are showing an interest in a silicon anode, which can give the graphite an energy boost. “We are reviewing places where that could take place if that was to commercialise, including in the UK,” Thompson says.“If our assets and technology can work around the world in different ways, we’ll do that,” Thompson says. “But what we’re doing is already extremely ambitious and challenging. And we’re doing it into a world that doesn’t know much about it. So we’ve sort of got to walk before we can run.”
A good article thank you very much!

There are even new details, such as that the purification has so far taken place in Belgium. I thought that had also taken place in Finland. We know that Talga has permission to process on a site south of the mine. From the official letter I conclude that they want to start concentrating and purifying there in the medium term.
The second interesting thing is the test loops (A to D) they have to do. I know it a bit different with series but it doesn't matter what it's called. Why does MT hesitate to describe the elaborate procedure in more detail and wait until a major newspaper asks for an audience? This is no secret just like the processing.
What I don't really understand in the article is the open end and the alternative to the ACC contract. I realise that it has to be formulated in a legally correct way. But just before that, they describe the time-consuming way to get here. It is not a matter of course to be able to obtain AAM in Europe! I also can't believe that there seems to be tons of test material available for free without any obligation.
And finally, the SG issue shows how much lobbying Germany in particular has done. I am still angry with SGL Carbon, Minister Altmeier and Ökotest. But I won't go into it again, because nobody was interested or could understand what happened there. But we can see the consequences in this article. Even if Talnode convinces by itself some customers still want to have SG in it. What the farmer doesn't know, he doesn't eat. (This proverb is clearer in German. I don't know if it exists among you.)
But a nice and informative article. Thank you again!
 
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A good article thank you very much!

There are even new details, such as that the purification has so far taken place in Belgium. I thought that had also taken place in Finland. We know that Talga has permission to process on a site south of the mine. From the official letter I conclude that they want to start concentrating and purifying there in the medium term.
The second interesting thing is the test loops (A to D) they have to do. I know it a bit different with series but it doesn't matter what it's called. Why does MT hesitate to describe the elaborate procedure in more detail and wait until a major newspaper asks for an audience? This is no secret just like the processing.
What I don't really understand in the article is the open end and the alternative to the ACC contract. I realise that it has to be formulated in a legally correct way. But just before that, they describe the time-consuming way to get here. It is not a matter of course to be able to obtain AAM in Europe! I also can't believe that there seems to be tons of test material available for free without any obligation.
And finally, the SG issue shows how much lobbying Germany in particular has done. I am still angry with SGL Carbon, Minister Altmeier and Ökotest. But I won't go into it again, because nobody was interested or could understand what happened there. But we can see the consequences in this article. Even if Talnode convinces by itself some customers still want to have SG in it. What the farmer doesn't know, he doesn't eat. (This proverb is clearer in German. I don't know if it exists among you.)
But a nice and informative article. Thank you again!

Dave and Mabel were invited to the big house for dinner, full silver service, roast lamb with all the trimmings for the main course.

Dave had never seen capers before, so he turned to Mabel, and said, sotto voce,
"Struth Mabel, they don't waste much of the sheep here."
 
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