Gratomic Announces Successful Startup of Aukam Proccesing Plant

Ships 2.25 tonnes of Graphite concentrate to Perpetuus

TORONTO, May 07, 2018 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Gratomic Inc. ("Gratomic" or the "Company") (TSX-V:GRAT) (FRANKFURT:CB81) a vertically integrated graphite to graphenes, advanced materials development company is pleased to announce that its Aukam processing plant has been commissioned successfully and an initial shipment of graphite concentrate has been made.

The Aukam processing plant was constructed between December 2017 and March 2018, with initial throughput and optimization reached during March and April 2018. To date, the plant has generated 4.5 tonnes of graphite concentrate grading between 88%-95% Carbon as Graphite ("Cg") of which 2.25 tonnes of concentrate has been shipped to Perpetuus Carbon Technologies ("Perpetuus") for the manufacture of graphenes to be used in the automobile bicycle tire industry. Gratomic and Perpetuus are currently in collaboration to build on Perpetuus' capability to initially provide 500 tonnes of surfaced modified graphenes per annum to support the volumes required by the tire manufacturing industry (see March, 4, 2018 news release). The first cycle tire order for the graphenes to a globally recognised brand is planned for delivery at the end of the second quarter of 2018. Additional applications that have now been generated in a preproduction format include radiant heating membranes and super hydrophobic coatings with an addressable market that includes: marine, oil & gas, power generation, industrial (repair & maintenance), infrastructure (new build) and automotive & transportation among others.

Gratomic's CO-CEO Arno Brand stated, "The successful start-up of our Aukam processing plant is a major milestone for the Company, one that allows us to begin feeding concentrate to Perpetuus for the manufacturing of graphenes for use as a material enhancing filler within tire elastomers."

The Aukam processing plant uses a simple crushing, grinding and flotation system with a current capacity of 600 tonnes per annum. Construction is already underway for the installation of a larger mill with a 10,000 tonne per annum capacity.

Graphite Feed for the Aukam processing plant is obtained from screening and sorting of stockpiles existing from historical and recent mining. An average feed grade of 56.29% Cg with a range of 41.55% Cg to 63.87% Cg was determined from ten, 2kg to 30kg, grab samples from across the stockpiled lumps (see June 3, 2016 and July 12, 2016 news releases). Note that assays of grab samples should not be taken as representative of the mineralization on the Aukam property as a whole.