Archer shares shoot higher on CSIRO news
Shares in diversified minerals explorer, Archer Exploration, surged 38 per cent yesterday following news that the CSIRO had confirmed the company’s Eyre Peninsula graphite deposit was suitable for the global lithium-ion battery market.
The shares closed at 12.5 cents a share and were changing hands at 12 cents in morning trade today.
Rechargeable lithium-ion batteries are widely used for all manner of electrical devices, including laptops, tablets and cameras, and there is a large potential market emerging as storage devices for renewable energy. Natural graphite is used as material for the battery anodes.
In a statement to the ASX, Archer managing director, Gerard Anderson, said “it is very pleasing that the CSIRO has now confirmed that our Campoona ultra-pure graphite is suited to battery applications”.
“Battery grade graphite sells at a substantial premium to traditional graphite and this will further underpin the profitability of our planned graphite mining operations on Eyre Peninsula,” Anderson said.
“The company remains excited by the growth prospects for the lithium-ion battery market which will see demand for our product increase as electric cars, power levelling and other technologies become more common, especially over the next five years,” he said.
Anderson said Archer had chosen the country’s leading scientific organisation for the analysis of its graphite because the CSIRO had been working in the field of lithium-ion batteries over the past decade and had “significant resources and expertise in the characterisation and testing of various components of these batteries”.
Archer is expected to lodge its mining proposal for the Campoona deposit, located near Cleve on Eyre Peninsula, early next week.
Archer told the ASX yesterday that it plans to produce up to 10,000 tonnes of battery-grade graphite per year from Campoona Shaft, a project that has an estimated mine life of more than 13 years. Production is then planned to move to another section of the Campooona deposit.
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