The mining newspaper for Alaska and Canada's North
The mining newspaper for Alaska and Canada's North
Mining Explorers 2024 - January 15, 2025
Lucid Motors has struck a deal with Graphite One to purchase anode material for the batteries going into its award-winning Air and upcoming seven-passenger Gravity electric vehicles.
The 2023 and 2024 drill programs at Graphite Creek focused on upgrading and expanding the resource, as well as collecting the geotechnical data needed to complete a feasibility study for the western Alaska mine project.
The former critical minerals stockpile site where the Graphite One processing and recycling plant has ready access to roads, rail, barges, affordable energy, and America's emerging EV sector.
Core from drilling through a high-grade lens at the Graphite Creek project in Alaska, home to the largest known deposit of graphite in the United States.
With financial backing from the Pentagon, a loan offer from the Export-Import Bank of the United States, and an American automaker signing up to buy future supplies of graphite for the batteries powering its electric vehicles, Graphite One focused its 2024 work on collecting the final information needed for a feasibility study that will provide details of a complete mine-to-EVs graphite supply chain in the United States.
The first link of this supply chain outlined in the feasibility study is a mine at Graphite Creek project about 40 miles north of Nome, Alaska, which hosts the largest known graphite deposit on American soil and one of the largest in the world, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.
The graphite mined in western Alaska will be shipped to a processing and recycling plant the company is developing at a former national defense critical minerals storage stockpile site in Ohio, where it will be upgraded to battery-grade anode material and other advanced graphite products.
To help break America's heavy reliance on China for these graphite products critical to the nation's clean energy future and security, the U.S. Department of Defense awarded Graphite One a $37.5 million grant to accelerate the completion of a feasibility study for the graphite supply chain.
"This Department of Defense grant underscores confidence in our strategy to build a 100% U.S.-based advanced graphite supply chain – from mining to refining to recycling," said Graphite One President and CEO Anthony Huston.
The 2023 and 2024 drill programs at Graphite Creek focused on upgrading and expanding the resource, as well as collecting the geotechnical data needed to complete a feasibility study for the western Alaska mine project.
Since the mid-2023 award of the grant from DOD, Graphite One has focused its field work at Graphite Creek on collecting all the geological, engineering, environmental, and economic information needed to complete a feasibility study by the end of 2024.
According to a calculation completed early in 2023, Graphite Creek hosted 37.6 million metric tons of measured and indicated resources averaging 5.14% (1.9 million metric tons) graphite; plus 243.7 million metric tons of inferred resource averaging 5.07% (12.3 million metric tons) graphite.
In preparation for a feasibility study (FS) that will detail plans for a mine at Graphite Creek that will produce 183,000 metric tons of graphite concentrate per year, which is more than three times larger than the operation outlined in a 2022 prefeasibility study, the DOD-funded field work has focused on upgrading some of the inferred resources to the higher confident measured and indicated categories for conversion to reserves upon completion of the FS, as well as collecting information for detailed engineering and permitting.
The 2024 program included 3,525 meters of drilling in 31 holes, which included 17 geotechnical holes to evaluate the stability of the pit walls at a future mine and to evaluate sites for the mill and other infrastructure. The remaining 14 holes targeted the expansion and upgrade of the resource, all of which continue to demonstrate the exceptional consistency of the near-surface, high-grade graphite deposit that remains open both to the east and west of the existing mineral resource estimate.
Highlights from the 2024 resource drilling at Graphite Creek include:
• 9.4 meters averaging 8.7% graphite from a depth of 102.4 meters in hole 24GC133.
• Six meters averaging 9.6% graphite from a depth of 17 meters in hole 24GC135.
• 6.7 meters averaging 18.6% graphite from a depth of 18.5 meters in hole 24GC143.
An upgraded resource being calculated at the writing of this report is being incorporated into an FS slated for completion in the coming weeks that provides economic and engineering details of developing a mine in western Alaska that will anchor a complete domestic supply chain with links in Ohio, Arizona, California, and garages across the U.S.
To connect Alaska graphite to EV buyers in North America and around the world, Graphite One is moving forward with an anode material (AAM) processing and battery materials recycling facility to be developed at a former national defense critical minerals stockpile site near Warren, Ohio.
The company's plans to develop this facility received a major boost from a $325 million loan offer extended by the Export-Import Bank of the United States (EXIM) in October.
"Based on the preliminary information submitted regarding expected U.S. exports and U.S. jobs supported by this project, EXIM may be able to consider potential financing of up to $325 million of the project's costs with a repayment tenor of 15 years under EXIM's Make More in America initiative," the export credit agency for the U.S. government penned in a letter of interest to Graphite One.
This federal loan would provide Graphite One much of the funding needed to build the processing and recycling plant at a previously industrialized property in Ohio with ready access to road, rail, barging facilities, and plentiful electricity.
The former critical minerals stockpile site where the Graphite One processing and recycling plant has ready access to roads, rail, barges, affordable energy, and America's emerging EV sector.
"Ohio is the perfect home for the second link in our strategy to build a 100% U.S.-based advanced graphite supply chain – from mining to refining to recycling," said Huston.
While Graphite One is advancing its Ohio plant and Graphite Creek Mine in parallel, it is expected that the processing facility will be finished ahead of the mine.
This timing, however, is advantageous.
While waiting for natural graphite from its planned mine in Alaska, which will take longer to permit and build, the Ohio plant will produce synthetic graphite anode material for lithium batteries. This will allow Graphite One to begin offering a domestic supply of this critical battery material while the mine is being developed, and the synthetic graphite can be used to augment and enhance the natural graphite delivered from Alaska.
Lucid Motors, a Silicon Valley-based automaker that has drawn accolades and awards for the exceptional performance and range of the EVs it produces at its Arizona factory, has already entered into an agreement to buy graphite anode material from Graphite One's Ohio plant.
"We are committed to accelerating the transition to sustainable vehicles and the development of a robust domestic supply chain ensures the United States, and Lucid, will maintain technology leadership in this global race," said Lucid Motors CEO Peter Rawlinson. "Through work with partners like Graphite One, we will have access to American-sourced critical raw materials, helping power our award-winning vehicles made with pride in Arizona."
This agreement provides the final link of an all-American graphite supply chain that connects the Graphite Creek project in western Alaska to Lucid EV drivers traveling American highways.
Over his more than 16 years of covering mining and mineral exploration, Shane has become renowned for his ability to report on the sector in a way that is technically sound enough to inform industry insiders while being easy to understand by a wider audience.
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