While eagerly awaiting for Zen,s long overdued PEA,I came across the 2012 PEA news release from Mason Graphite.Although it,s like comparing apple to orange between the two companies,I believe we can use the study as a reference to Zen,s PEA in regards to cost.Here,s some of the detail:

● Initial direct capital costs of $89.9M ● Production costs of $390 per tonne of finished product ● $364M pre-tax NPV (8% discount); $283M pre-tax NPV (10% discount) ● 33.7% pre-tax Internal Rate of Return ● Payback period of 2.5 years ● 22-year mine life ● Average sales price of $1,525 pe -

We are talking about flake graphite here and they declared a figure of over 60 million tons at an average grade of about 27%cgr.However if one reads on,they plan to produce about 50,000tons a year of finished product at an average of 96% purity but they will have to mine close to 300,000 tons of ores in order to produce that figure.

Even though there had been concern over the grades at the Zen deposit from time to time,I believe that the cost to bring the Albany graphite to the market as a finished product will be extremely low due to it,s purity.We will have to wait and see how much ores will be watsed from the Albany graphite in order to bring to 99.9% purity.If a company runs a copper mine which has an average grade of 3%PT,it should be extremely profitable since there,s no purity issue there and the price they get from the copper will easily off-set the waste issue.I know it,s like comparing apple to orange again but I am eager to find out if the process to mine the albany graphite resembles anything like mining diamonds from a pipe.It,s very clean cut from an environmental point of view since they only had to refill the pipe with their waste materials once all of the ores are taken out.Very little environmental impact afterwards and the reclaimation cost should also be low in comparison with other mines.

Perhaps I should ask John Kaiser about this since he is the expert of diamond mining.