glorieux,

Just re-read the NR from NGC via the link you supplied in your post which also says the following: "NGC's graphite, made into spherical and purified competed very well against the synthetic comparable. This tells me that our graphite should do even better on a product quality basis but we will blow away NGC because of our very cheap cost."

The first part (in bold) is a fair assessment of the spherical graphite made from the concentrates produced straight from the mill at Bissett Creek. The National Research Council of Canada (NRC has conducted a comprehensive test program to show the achievement of NGC process which among other things

- loss of only 30% (thanks to the large flakes NGC has) compared to loss of 70% from using small flakes from China.

- the NR provides a comprehensive evaluation by the NRC for other characteristics such as chemical analysis, etc.

Blowing away NGC (what for)? It looks like ZEN has a very nice deposit, and presumably soon we will see test results showing similar, or better quality hopefully, than NGC spherical graphite, but ZEN has said (Corporate Presentation) that it would go after the more lucrative synthetic market ($13.0B). So, I see need for pitting one against the other. Similarly, there is no need for comparing hydrothermal/vein-typed with flake, noting that vein-type graphite also contains flakes, as per ZEN sponsored research at Lakehead University, and of course everyone would agree that large flakes are much better than small flakes for various applications, especially in making spherical graphite for high-end battery application.

I would suggest that we give ZEN and NGC each a separate sand box to play in. They are not competitors.

Disclosure: I own both NGC and ZEN. For NGC, it's the propect of making profit as a graphite producer (1 year from now), and ZEN as good candidate for speculation during the exploration stage. My ZEN holding is much larger than what I have for NGC, and evaluate them based on only their own merits (based on facts) as separate entities, and not pitting one against the other.

goldhunter