Eagle Graphite: Building a Greener Mine Site

A recent interview with BNN and Eagle Graphite Incorporated (TSXV:EGA) President, Jamie Deith,  highlighted the Black Crystal graphite quarry and processing plant, located in British Columbia’s Slocan Valley.
As quoted in the article:

Jamie Deith, president of Eagle Graphite, acquired the operation in 2006 on the strength of its generous deposits of high-quality graphite, and the fact that it was completely permitted for production through a process that included review by the area’s First Nations.
“Our deposit is very different from hard rock mines, in that we can use excavators to scoop up the soft surface sand that holds the graphite,” he says. “To date, this is how we have extracted all of our feed material.”
As a result, graphite is quarried and not mined in the way that most of the world’s minerals are extracted. The operation concentrates on large, quality deposits located near the surface, most no deeper than 50 metres. Once the mineral has been removed, soil is replaced and natural vegetation returns to the area.
“We have been developing ways to increase the graphite concentration of our feed material right at the dig site,” says Deith. “The idea is to separate out some of the other minerals before we even start moving feed to the plant. Hauling a smaller quantity of highly concentrated feed means consuming less resources moving material around, and the waste can be place back into the quarry immediately, minimizing the impact at that site. We already have an amazingly light environmental footprint, and this has the potential to further improve on it.”
“When graphite is removed from ore using a combination of mechanical and chemical action, you typically have a product ranging from 94-to-96-per-cent purity. But Eagle Graphite can achieve 98-to-99-per-cent,” says Supermin president George Hawley. “For higher purities you need a secondary process to take that material up to even greater concentrations.”
Black Crystal graphite has been refined to an extraordinary level of purity—as high as 99.995 per cent. Choosing how that graphite is refined is critical to minimizing the operation’s environmental footprint. In much of the world, processing means exposing the concentrates to high levels of nitric and hydrofluoric acid, then flushing out the acids using vast quantities of water.
“Automobile companies are realizing that they can’t colour outside the lines against a wave of environmental consciousness,” says Deith. “EV buyers are sharing in a new vision of how we can live and thrive as a species and environmental sustainability is extremely important to them. The fact that Tesla has pre-sold almost a half-million cars representing only a single model is testament to the fact that there’s now broad consumer acceptance for a good product with legitimate environmental credentials.”
Eagle Graphite is also looking to other markets that may require lithium-ion storage batteries, in particular producers of renewable energy who employ solar arrays and wind turbines.
“The one competitive advantage that some of these renewable technologies lack is the ability to store the energy they produce, even for short periods of time,” says Deith. “With a capacity for even temporary storage, energy production curves can be smoothed out and little of the energy produced will go to waste. EVs and grid storage systems that rely on batteries are supposed to help save the planet. The last thing that buyers of these products will want to hear is that these raw materials come from less than transparent sources.”
At its heart, Eagle Graphite remains a business in search of growth—but never at the expense of its environmental credibility or sustainability.
“The Eagle Graphite operation offers huge economic potential for the region,” says Conroy. “Graphite is a valuable product needed to construct the batteries for the electric cars that people are demanding. But I think it’s important to demonstrate that we can have both jobs and mineral extraction carried out in an environmentally sustainable fashion—it isn’t a case of either/or.”

Connect with Eagle Graphite Incorporated (TSXV:EGA) to receive an Investor Presentation.