Glorieux,

I will leave the topic of comparison between the 2 companies aside, since if one side won the other would lose, and vice versa. Hence, there would be no advantage what-so-ever for either companies.

I have my arguments for supporting ZEN (that why I still have a sizable chunk for ZEN shares...have not sold any yet). But this post will deal with NGC, as a stand-alone topic.

The latest information on Bissett Creek graphite processing is discussed in NGC latest Corporate Presentation which is available on NGC website.

http://www.northerngraphite.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/Sept-2013.pdf

Some salient info is discussed below

- Flake size and Purity for the concentrate: Slide 23/33, purity is ranging from a minimum of 94% to 98% for the concentrate. Flake size distribution: 90% of the flakes is in large to jumbo flakes (+80 to +32 mesh) and 50% is extra large to jumbo flakes. There is also a comparison with its peers on flake size distribution, and the expected weighted average revenue of $1750/tonne (Slide17/33 shows the extra large flake can fetch 1800-2000+/tonne).

Slide 24/33 shows a cost of production of approximately $850/tonne. So the difference/profit = 1750 - 850 = $900/tonne x 19000 tpy = $17M/yr, which is quite good for a small production company. Remember that this is a conservative company and it wants to walk first before a high speed run. The plant is designed such that it is scalable and production can be increased if there is a demand for the product (you don't want to over produced since, unlike gold, this is an industrial mineral and the company would need off-take agreements for their products.

- Value-added processing (spherical graphite- battery): Slide 25/33 discussed this second stream of production. If there is a demand, spherical graphite can be produced as an option. So essentially NGC is planning for a dual processing streams. Yes, there will be some extra cost, but as long as the revenue exceeds the production cost by a healthy margin then it would be worth while to do the second stream as well, noting that NGC has their proprietary process to produce the value-added product, hence the cost would be expected to be reasonable. They are targetting the market for the value-added product in the range of $4000 (uncoated) to $8000 (coated)/tonne.

If the profit is over $2000/tonne then I would say it's not bad a profit for NGC. As indicated, NGC management is quite conservative and they are not aiming for a revenue of $20,000/tonne graphite.

Hope that the above is informative.

goldhunter