TORONTO (miningweekly.com) – Graphite producer Flinders Resources has struck an agreement with a strategic Chinese partner to assist the company to transition to high-purity graphite production, putting it in a position to take advantage of the rapidly expanding and "game-changing" lithium-ion battery energy-storage industry.

  TSX-V-listed Flinders was currently the only public company with a modern Western mine and production facility able to produce natural flake graphite.

“China is presently the leader in graphite purification technology and is the primary supplier of high-purity natural flake graphite to the battery sector. By partnering with experts in the high-purity field, Flinders gains a competitive edge for the timely transition into [this] market,” president and CEO Blair Way said.

Flinders noted that product from its flagship Woxna graphite plant, in Sweden, had already been shipped to China and detailed bench-scale testwork was under way to improve the high-purity flow sheet developed for Woxna graphite in 2001.

To this end, planned work would seek to verify all technical aspects of the purification process and define economic parameters. The next stage of work would aim to finalise the detailed design of the high-purity graphite flow sheet.

Importantly, the Chinese partner had the ability to supply all key elements of a high-purity graphite plant.

Meanwhile, Flinders advised that the Woxna plant remained on a production-ready status and could be restarted in “a matter of hours” once viable economics had returned to the graphite market.

Flinders intended to position itself as a supplier of choice to the high-purity graphite market, while conserving the company's cash position of C$4-million, in the face of four-year-low prices in natural flake graphite prices. Graphite supply from Woxna to traditional refractory markets would be restricted until profit margins improved.