Graphite developer Nouveau Monde on Friday announced that it would proceed with the construction of a demonstration plant for value-added products at its Matawinie project, in Quebec, to tap into the growing lithium-ion battery and expandable graphite markets.

This follows a successful capital raising of C$12-million, in addition to the C$10-million raised from Brian Gilbertson’s Pallinghurst in April this year.

In a private placement, Nouveau Monde issued 42 345 213 shares at C0.235 each, for proceeds of C$9.95-million. It also closed an unsecured financing with Pallinghurst for C$2-million.

The combined equity raise would allow Nouveau Monde to construct the value-added products plant and to continue to fund the operation of its existing graphite flake plant, allowing for production qualification and process optimisation ahead of full commercial operations.

The private placement was supported by 19.9%-shareholder Pallinghurst, the Quebec government, through Ressources Québec, founder and CEO Éric Desaulniers, CFO Charles-Olivier Tarte, COO Karl Trudeau and board member Patrice Boulanger.

In 2015, Nouveau Monde discovered high-quality graphite deposits on its Matawinie property, located in Saint-Michel-des-Saints, north of Montréal. The corporation has completed a feasibility study, which revealed strong economics with projected high-quality graphite concentrate production level of 100 000 t/y over a 26-year period from an all-electric openpit mining operation.

Nouveau Monde will operate its demonstration plant until 2020. During this period, the company expects to produce 2 000 t of concentrated flake graphite to qualify its products with North American and international clients.

A total of 400 t of flake graphite concentrate from the demonstration plant will be sold to commodities trader Traxys for customer product prequalification purposes. It also has a five-year, 25 000 t/y offtake and joint marketing agreement with Traxys.

Meanwhile, at a meeting last Friday the following people were elected to the board of Nouveau Monde: Yannick Beaulieu, Boulanger, Desaulniers, Nathalie Jodoin, Marc Prud’homme, Christopher Shepherd, Arne Frandsen and Pierre Renaud. Guy Bourassa withdrew his candidacy as a director.