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BAtteRY MIneRALs

Renascor heads downstream

raphite might be on the nose with over a 10-year term largely flew under downstream product, so we went whole-
Gthe majority of investors, but it still the radar. hog and did a battery anode material
remains the “main game” for South Aus- That amount covers roughly one-third study that integrated the concentrate into
tralia’s Renascor Resources Ltd. of the projected initial production capaci- the downstream and we’ve been doing
Despite formally restarting gold explo- ty of Renascor’s proposed battery anode our best since then to move that forward.
ration activities last month for the first material operation. “Plugging it into the downstream space
time in years and bringing in a subsidi- Renascor recently completed a study to produce a purified spherical graphite
ary of Rio Tinto Ltd to run the ruler over on an integrated operation that uses allows us to pass some low-cost cost
another prospective tenement in the Siviour concentrate as feedstock for pu- savings, provided we can get the right
Adelaide Fold Belt, Renascor is as com- rified spherical graphite production. Key scale, on to the downstream operations.
mitted as ever to developing its Siviour estimates from that assessment include That’s a much sweeter spot from an
graphite project. gross operating costs of $US1,989/t, a offtake perspective because rather than
“It’s the main game,” Renascor man- post-tax NPV of $713 million, IRR of 33% dealing with processors in China who
aging director Da- and an average tend to be relatively small companies –
vid Christensen annual EBITDA of not big SOEs – we’re dealing with the
told Paydirt when $156 million. mega anode companies.
asked where Start-up capi- “We talk about graphite being a criti-
graphite currently tal for the down- cal mineral…well, it becomes a critical
sits on the com- stream operation mineral once you get into that purified
pany’s list of priori- was estimated at spherical form. It’s not so critical as a
ties. $213 million, in- concentrate for industrial applications.”
“Gold is some- cluding $114 mil- Siviour is now the world’s largest
what helpful be- lion for the mine graphite reserve outside of Africa, host-
cause it gives us and concentrator ing a total 51.5mt @ 7.4% TGC for 3.8mt
near-term news and $90 million for contained graphite (including proven re-
flow and an oppor- the battery anode serves of 15.8mt @ 8.4% TGC for 1.3mt)
tunity to extract component of the which is capable of supporting a mine life
additional value project. of at least 40 years.
out of the tene- Renascor re- With a boosted cash position of $5.2
ment portfolio. I leased a DFS on million following a $3.6 million raising in
know it’s a bit of concentrate-only September, Renascor is well funded to
a schizophrenic production from continue work on both its graphite and
message, but it Siviour a little gold properties. A programme of geo-
was too good to more than a year physical surveying and exploration soil
pass on to some- ago which indi- sampling at the Carnding gold project
one else and not cated a $114 mil- began last month ahead of a planned
do it ourselves. lion capex for an 2,000m drilling campaign.
“The graphite initial 80,000 tpa Previous drilling results at Carnding, in
is a world beater operation. Cash SA’s Gawler Craton, include 7m @ 5.14
in terms of the flow from the first g/t gold from 24m (including 2m @ 16.42
project’s ability to four years of con- g/t from 30m) and 6m @ 4.94 g/t gold
unlock a relatively centrate produc- from 14m.
large amount of tion would then be Renascor also recently entered into
shareholder value, used to fund a $77 a binding agreement with Rio Tinto Ex-
whereas I don’t David Christensen million expansion ploration Pty Ltd regarding a key tene-
think the kind of to 144,000 tpa. ment within the Marree project which is
gold project we’re C h r i s t en sen understood to be prospective for copper.
looking at is a world beater. Having said said the company decided to pursue a Rio Tinto can earn up to 80% of EL5586
that, it’s the type of project that in a posi- downstream option for Siviour, about through payments of $200,000 and sole-
tive gold market could be a very attrac- 15km west of Arno Bay on SA’s Eyre funding exploration of $3 million.
tive earner for our shareholders.” Peninsula, because it had emerged “It was something that we picked up
Given the current lack of investor sup- as the most likely path towards landing because it had some similarities to what
port for graphite stocks, Renascor’s an- offtake. you would see in the African copper belt,”
nouncement in late September that it had “When we finished our DFS, we had Christensen said.
entered into a non-binding MoU with Chi- discussions with people that were most “We’ve decided to look a little closer
nese anode company Shanxi Minguang likely going to get us over the line from an not only at the gold, but some of these
New Material Technology Co Ltd – a sub- offtake perspective in terms of balance other prospects we’ve been holding on to
sidiary of Fujian Metallurgical Holding Co sheet scale and bankability with those on for a while in light of where commodity
Ltd, one of China’s largest state-owned the anode side,” he said. prices sit right now.”
enterprises – for the purchase of up to “Now what they were really interested – Michael Washbourne
10,000 tpa of purified spherical graphite in wasn’t just the concentrate, it was the

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