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Top Rank
Standard Graphite Explores 13 Quebec and Ontario Properties
By Greg Klein

With 13 wholly-owned properties in Quebec and Ontario, Standard Graphite TSXV:SGH is a company in search of a flagship. But within a year, President/CEO Chris Bogart maintains, Standard will have designated its focal point and developed a 43-101 resource. Then, he adds, with the expertise of its experienced graphite team, the company can take a worthy project all the way into production.

Just last week, Standard finished a 3,310-line-kilometre airborne electromagnetic survey over its entire domains. “The results will be coming,” says Bogart. “We’ve already started ground work on our Ontario properties. As the snow melts, we’ll do the mapping, sampling and trenching for all the properties. Once that’s complete, we’ll rank our properties according to the results. And then we’ll start developing those and moving towards drill targets for the summer. Once you’re drilling, the season is 12 months a year.”

Standard began acquiring graphite properties in November. All are located in the carbon-rich Grenville geological sub-province and most of them in the vicinity of noteworthy neighbours. Three properties sit just within the Labrador Trough in northeast Quebec, five in southwest Quebec, three more in southeast Ontario and a straggler near the deep-sea port of Sept-Îles, Quebec.



Of the Ontario projects, Bogart points to Little Bryan and Black Donald as standouts that also enjoy excellent infrastructure. The 9,000-hectare Black Donald Property surrounds a former mine that produced both amorphous and flake graphite from 1896 to 1954. Amorphous graphite is the type employed in steelmaking, as well as auto clutches and brake linings, sports equipment and other uses. The more expensive flake graphite is the type associated with emerging needs: lithium-ion batteries, vanadium redox batteries, pebble-bed nuclear reactors, solar panels and fuel cells associated with energy storage, generation and efficiency. Graphite’s unique qualities as an extremely light, strong, heat-resistant and conductive material open up a host of present uses and future possibilities.

Going back to mid-century, the Black Donald Mine’s final 10 years of operation reportedly produced grades between 25% and 30% carbon. In its time, it was “one of the highest-grade producing projects in the world,” Bogart says. The company reports its EM survey found two long, well-defined conductors, possibly indicating mineralization that replicates the former mine’s trend. “That tells us that geological area is amenable to graphite occurrences over large stretches of ground. There’s definitely the potential for a lookalike mine.”

Groundwork has already begun there and on the 2,800-hectare Little Bryan, where exploration will follow up on 1989 trenching and a recently found five-kilometre near-surface conductive trend. Along with Standard‘s B Lyall Property, Little Bryan and Black Donald share proximity to Northern Graphite’s TSXV:NGC Bissett Creek large-flake graphite project as well as Ontario Graphite’s Kearney Mine, scheduled to resume production in 3Q this year.

Carheil, one of the northeast Quebec properties, also looks promising. EM results suggest four conductors with strike lengths of up to six kilometres. The 3,885-hectare property lies about 10 kilometres from Focus Metals’ TSXV:FMS high-grade, large-flake Lac Knife Project. Spring thaw cooperating, groundwork should begin about mid-May to be followed by summer drilling.

“Carheil has a power line and a road running right through the property, so we’ve got great infrastructure considering where it’s at,” Bogart says. “It’s a big mining camp.” Standard‘s nearby Sandy Lake and Sandy Lake NE are also prospective targets.

Five so-far underexplored properties in southwest Quebec share proximity to Timcal Graphite & Carbon’s Lac-des-Îles Mine, the larger of Canada’s two graphite producers. Simon Moores, a graphite authority who writes for Industrial Minerals, reports that after decades of mining Timcal plans to move its operation to a second, nearby pit later this year. “They reckon that’s good until 2018,” he says. Timcal has other targets on its privately owned land as well, the result of ongoing drilling. Standard awaits EM results on four of its five properties before mapping, sampling and trenching begin.

The company has properties galore, but Bogart emphasizes that Standard‘s team plays a crucial role. “We’re the only exploration company that I’m aware of in Canada that has a graphite exploration geologist and a graphite executive with sales, marketing and operations experience. So we can not only discover, identify, evaluate and graduate a project, but we also have a team that can take it to production.”

Chief Geologist Antoine Fournier’s 20 years of experience includes his role in the discovery of the Lac Knife Deposit. Senior VP Business Development Benoit Gascon was President of Stratmin Graphite, past owner of Lac-des-Îles. While there, he negotiated Stratmin’s takeover to form Timcal, where he remained in senior roles.

The importance of a graphite geologist like Fournier is clear enough. Gascon brings an additional advantage. “In industrial minerals, sales and marketing are of absolute cornerstone importance,” Bogart explains. “So we’re well suited to advance those projects.” Bogart himself was co-founder of Magnum Uranium, a TSXV company which was bought out by TSX-listed Energy Fuels.

Bogart will address OnPage Media’s May 2 Graphite Express-Conference in Toronto. “I’m looking forward to it,” he says. “I always love telling the story to new people.”

He concludes, “Any investor should lean heavily on management’s expertise and track record. Ours is quite substantial. It’s a great management team that’s had a lot of success in this sector…. We’ve been doing well. We’ve had good results, we’re providing value.”

At press time, Standard Graphite had 24.1 million shares outstanding at $0.55 for a market cap of $13.3 million.

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