I think I can comment on the testing issue. End users would likely provide a list of specifications for the material they wanted. For example.

1) Purity - 99.9% +/- 0.005%

2) Particle Size - 20 microns +/- with an acceptable distribution

3) Impurities such as S or B below certain limits

ZEN or SGS must then prep the material for these specs. And different companies and applications might be slightly different.

Material would then be prepared, analysed documented and shipped to an end user. End users will then follow their normal processes. Take Panasonic, they don't mine or purify graphite but they use lots of it and they process it into batteries. So a company like Panasonic would then run quality control on material shipped from ZEN as per their usual process to make sure they agreed and it met their internal specs. Then the qualified material would go to process development or manufacturing who would then makes something such as a roll of anode material with the graphite. This product would then have to be tested and some tests might take time especially if they were determining longevity or rechargablity.

If we have 20 End Users or even 5 you can see where the issues are for ZEN. At each step ZEN and the End User might have to be in contact or discuss results to ensure that everyone was doing the same thing and on the same page. If specs did not match there would need to be rework or rechecking etc. And the product work by and end user could be very extensive if say Panasonic or someone else had to build a range of battery sizes etc.

So all in all I am not surprised this is all taking time. The fact that we have so much interest in the Albany graphite from End Users is also an issue, because ZEN has a small team and has to deal with all these potential customers.

In my opinion we as the HDude says have a great team, a great deposit and we will get a great price at the end of the day.