Alabama Graphite Corp. (TSXV:ALP) announced that SGS Canada Inc. has sent it the results of initial Bond Work Hardness Indices tests completed on oxidized and unoxidized material from its Alabama-based Coosa project.

Such tests “measure of the amount of work required to reduce a rock in size to the point where individual minerals are liberated and can be recovered.”

As quoted in the press release:

The results reported by SGS substantiate the Company’s belief that the oxidized portion of the Coosa Deposit is substantially softer than other defined North American graphite resources. Published Bond work indexes for advanced graphite projects are typically in the 10 to 15 kWh/t range. The 5.3 kWh/t value from the oxidized portion of the deposit is a unique characteristic of graphite deposits in Alabama. Because the Ice Age glaciations never reached as far south as Alabama, the soft, decomposed graphitic schists in the oxidized zones were never scoured off.

Dr. Douglas Oliver, Alabama’s vice president of exploration, commented:

The Bond Work Hardness Index for the oxidized portion of the Coosa resource offers opportunities not found anywhere else in North America for Alabama Graphite. We expect that the relative ease in the milling of decomposed graphitic schist will translate into lower operating expenses for the project. In addition, we suspect that a mill designed to take advantage of soft rock will also result in savings in capital expenditures if the project were to go into production. A significant portion of the Coosa deposit is oxidized and could be preferentially exploited to take advantage of potential savings in both CapEx and OpEx. Historically, all of the graphite production in Alabama came from oxidized graphitic schists.

Click here to read the full Alabama Graphite Corp. (TSXV:ALP) press release.