MINING POTENTIAL
Genius Properties Ltd. conducts aerial survey of Cape Breton property
Graphite deposits hold promise.
A Montreal- based mining exploration company that started conducting an $80,000 aerial survey last week of a flake graphite deposit it owns outside Sydney says it has mining potential if the investment capital can be secured.
Genius Properties Ltd. bought the Mount Cameron graphite deposit in October 2016 from Mount Cameron Minerals Ltd. It is contained within seven licences on slightly more than 13 square kilometres in the Boisdale Hills area, about 25 kilometres outside Sydney.
“We know one thing — it’s a top quality of graphite. Right now we’re looking at exactly if it’s going to be a sizable worldclass deposit,” Guy Goulet, president and CEO of Genius Properties Ltd., said in an interview on Friday.
Last week the company, which hired Gatineau- based Prospectair to conduct a high-resolution magnetic and time-domain electromagnetic survey, told shareholders the work would “expand our knowledge” on the property and allow Genius Properties to “advance the project rapidly.”
It was expected the aerial survey would take three days to complete under calm weather conditions.
“Shallow graphite-rich bodies at and near the surface are extremely conductive and their location, thickness and geometry can be identified using such surveying technology,” the company said in its note to investors.
The quality of graphite found in the Boisdale Hills is what’s found primarily in lithium-ion batteries, which are commonly used in a myriad of portable electronic and medical devices.
The area has been an interest of mining companies dating back to the 1990s.
Preliminary mineral processing studies had been carried out in 2008 by Ian Flint, the former director of the Minerals Engineering Centre at Dalhousie University in Halifax.
Work in the fall of 2010 began on 400 square metres of the graphite deposit using 10 drill holes to test for quality. It found graphite ranging in grades from 1.5 per cent to 15 per cent.
This week’s survey required a helicopter to scan the eightkilometre long and 1.5-km wide area to determine the size of the graphite deposit.
Goulet, who joined Genius Properties in March, is hesitant to make any predictions the survey may reveal but he believes it could be a sizable deposit.
“The work done on those 400 metres are not the best results, are not the worst results that we’re going to get,” he said.
If the surveying work by Prospectair provides promising results, Goulet said he would continue raising investment dollars for the project.
It would also require Genius to spin off all of its current mining properties into two new wholly-owned Canadian subsidiaries — one for its gold mining interests and the other specifically set up for its graphite assets.
Goulet said they will become publicly listed companies on the Toronto Stock Exchange.
“It will be way easier to get the specific investor,” he said, noting it will likely happen in February.
The area of exploration’s close proximity to a seaport is an important factor that would attract investor interest, Goulet noted.
The high quality flake graphite found in lithium-ion batteries will have a large market to draw from in the coming years, said Goulet.
Some electric vehicles can require as much as 50 kilograms of graphite such as the Tesla model S 85 kwh.
In its 2017 electrical vehicle outlook, Bloomberg New Energy Finance forecasts the market for electric cars will take off after 2025 when it’s expected lithium- ion battery prices will plunge by more than 70 per cent by 2030.
The report also indicates electric vehicles will account for about 54 per cent of new car sales by 2040.