AGORACOM Small-cap Investor Relations Blog

• Graphite Exploration Companies in North American Garnering Attention from Investors

Vancouver, B.C., Nov. 24, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Lomiko Metals Inc. (“Lomiko”) (TSX-V: LMR, OTC: LMRMF, FSE: DH8C) is focused on the exploration and development of flake graphite in Quebec for the new green economy.  Lomiko is pleased to announce the Lomiko Technical, Safety and Sustainability Committee (“LTSSC”) has recommended the acceptance of a Proposal by SGS Canada Inc. to conduct a Metallurgical Process Development Program to the Board of Directors.  This Program has been accepted and approved by the Lomiko Board.

SGS Metallurgical Process Development Plan

Lomiko plans to ship four composites weighing 30 – 35 kg each consisting of high-grade and low-grade samples from the Refractory and the Graphene Battery mineralized zones will be shipped to SGS in Lakefield.  The main scope of the work program includes:

• Sample Preparation
• Chemical Characterisation
• Comminution Testing
• Flowsheet Development
• Environmental Testing

The samples will be stage-crushed in a series of jaw and cone crushers to minimize the risk of flake degradation and fines generation.  Samples will be extracted for comminution testing, chemical characterization, and the generation of two Master composites.

Bond ball mill grindability tests will be carried out to establish grinding energy requirements to assist in the design of the preliminary comminution circuit.

Scoping level flowsheet development testing will be carried out on the two Master composites to establish a conceptual flowsheet.  The primary objectives of the flowsheet development program are to maximize the graphite recovery into a flotation concentrate while minimizing flake degradation. The final concentrates will be subjected to size fraction analyses to determine the flake size distribution and total carbon grade profile of the two mineralized zones.

The high-grade and low-grade samples of the two mineralized zones will be subjected to variability flotation testing using the flowsheet and conditions that were developed for the two Master composites. Since a flowsheet must be able to treat all domains encountered in a deposit, these variability tests serve the purpose of assessing the robustness of the proposed flowsheet.

Static geochemical tests will be carried out to assess the acid-generating potential of the La Loutre tailings with and without a sulphide rejection circuit.

Lomiko’s Near Term Goals

Graphite demand is expected to increase exponentially for the mined natural graphite material, as more is used in the production of spherical graphite for graphite in the anode portion of Electric Vehicle Lithium-ion batteries.

Lomiko completed a $ 750,000 financing October 23, 2020 and plans to work on its near-term goals:

1) Complete 100% Acquisition of the Property, currently 80% owned by Lomiko Metals.

2) Complete metallurgy and graphite characterization to confirm li-ion anode grade material.

3) Complete a Technical Report to confirm that the extent of the mineralization equals or surpasses the nearby Imerys Mine, owned by international mining conglomerate.

A “technical report” means a report prepared and filed in accordance with this Instrument and Form 43-101F1 Technical Report, and includes, in summary form, all material scientific and technical information in respect of the subject property as of the effective date of the technical report;

4) Complete Preliminary Economic Assessment (PEA)

A PEA means a study, other than a pre-feasibility or feasibility study, that includes an economic analysis of the potential viability of mineral resources.

For more information on Lomiko Metals, Promethieus, review the website at www.lomiko.com , and www.promethieus.com , contact A. Paul Gill at 604-729-5312 or email: [email protected].

A. Paul Gill
Lomiko Metals Inc. (TSX-V: LMR)
6047295312
[email protected]

SPONSOR: Lomiko Metals is focused on the exploration and development of minerals for the new green economy such as lithium and graphite. Lomiko has an option for 100% of the high-grade La Loutre graphite Property, Lac Des Iles Graphite Property and the 100% owned Quatre Milles Graphite Property. Lomiko is uniquely poised to supply the growing EV battery market. Click Here For More Information

• The Guardian claims that the West Midlands, south Wales, and the north-east of England are among the regions all vying to be home to the United Kingdom’s first battery gigafactory, part of a £1 billion automotive transformation bid by the country.

According to The Guardian, industry actors are growing impatient with the UK Government which has yet to fully commit to EV batteries, despite a vague £1 billion committed for an Automotive Transformation Fund.

Gigafactories – a term coined by industry darling Elon Musk which simply refers to a large battery manufacturing facility – are expected to be a key component in any major economy’s efforts to transition towards a low carbon way of life, but without government backing are left reliant solely upon industry to take up the mantle.

Which is not to say that industry is not taking up the mantle, but government backing and financial support is vital if the automotive industry, for example, is to be able to transition quickly enough to the large-scale battery manufacturing required to deliver anticipated demand.

Carmakers around the world are finding themselves under increasing pressure to offer more electric vehicle options, which in turn requires ever more EV batteries.

As current demand increases, future demand is made more secure, and when future demand is secured, governments and industry are more willing to make long-term commitments.

“You’ve got to look at the demand picture,” said Julian Hetherington, director of automotive transformation at the Advanced Propulsion Centre (APC), the body in charge of disbursing UK government investment in the sector, speaking to The Guardian. “People will make commitments when they’re certain they’ll have offtake [of batteries].”

The APC, along with Innovate UK, as well as the UK’s Departments for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy and for International Trade, outlined the Automotive Transformation Fund earlier this year, a new programme which has allocated £1 billion “to put the UK at the centre of the global transition to zero emissions.”

Specifically, the Fund is intended to “support the large-scale industrialisation of an electrified supply chain.”

UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson, according to The Guardian, is expected to address the automotive sector with a 10-point plan as soon as this week, while the newspaper speculated that a commitment to support a gigafactory in one of the country’s regions could form part of Chancellor Rishi Sunak’s spending review on 25 November.

In fact, according to the most recent reports, Boris Johnson’s government is set to bring forward a ban on petrol and diesel vehicles to 2030.

Currently, the majority of the world’s EV batteries are being made overseas – with China, Japan, and South Korea accounting for 85% of the world’s EV battery manufacturing, according to an October Greenpeace report – which risks automotive employment shrinking in markets which are not manufacturing their own EV batteries.

If countries traditionally used to manufacturing ICE vehicles suddenly find themselves no longer manufacturing key components for EV vehicles, a major component of a country’s economy and workforce could suffer.

Plans for British gigafactories are few and far between. Currently, EV battery manufacturing in the UK is led by a 2GWh annual capacity factory alongside Nissan’s car factory in Sunderland.

A joint venture announced in 2018 between Williams Advanced Engineering and Unipart Manufacturing Group outlined a plan to build another battery making facility in Coventry to build 10,000 battery packs a year, and Unipart has also been chosen as a key player in Jaguar Land Rover’s battery assembly plant.

However, the biggest plans currently in the open are those between British start-ups AMTE Power and Britishvolt, who signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) in May which could eventually yield a gigafactory with a potential 35GWh capacity.

SOURCE: https://thedriven.io/2020/11/17/uk-regions-vie-to-host-countrys-first-battery-gigafactory/

SPONSOR: Lomiko Metals is focused on the exploration and development of minerals for the new green economy such as lithium and graphite. Lomiko has an option for 100% of the high-grade La Loutre graphite Property, Lac Des Iles Graphite Property and the 100% owned Quatre Milles Graphite Property. Lomiko is uniquely poised to supply the growing EV battery market. Click Here For More Information

• Electrification, online learning, alternative credentials and low-cost degrees at scale.

October was a big month for us electric mobility nerds. First came the Hummer EV reveal, and next came the announcement of a Harley-Davidson electric bike.

What about this $112,595 1,000-horsepower electric vehicle, this still unknown price or specifications e-bike, has anything to do with colleges and universities? The answer to this question depends on how you think about the future of higher ed.

For cars and trucks, the destination of the future is clear, if not the timing. Eventually, at some point, batteries will replace internal combustion. Electric cars are not only emissions-free, they contain exponentially fewer moving parts than traditional vehicles. The electric car or truck of the future will be simpler to produce and will have few parts to break down. This simplicity and reliability will eventually drive down the total costs of ownership.

How long the transition to electric vehicles takes will depend on how long it takes for battery technology to improve. While coming down in price quickly, batteries large enough to power a car for any reasonable range are still hugely expensive. Beyond range anxiety, charging times remain significantly longer than filling up a gas tank, and the charging infrastructure is nowhere near as built out as gas stations.

The Hummer EV is straight out of the Tesla playbook for vehicle electrification. Start with a high-priced luxury model and then use those revenues to drive down the production costs for less expensive models. Nobody needs a $112,000 electric truck. I highly doubt that almost any Hummer EV buyers will drive the thing off-road. The Hummer EV is a status symbol, pure and simple. We may think that this thing is ridiculously over-the-top, but if it helps get us to the transition to affordable electric vehicles, we are happy that GM is going for it.

In higher ed, neither the future destination nor timing is as clear as it is with cars and trucks. There are no direct analogs for internal combustion engines or batteries across the postsecondary ecosystem.

However, we can make some broad projections about the dominant trends shaping the future of higher education. As with the need to move away from internal combustion due to the necessity to decarbonize in the face of a climate emergency, higher ed faces its own reckoning in the form of demographic shifts and diminished public funding. The environment that almost every college and university must navigate will only get more challenging in the years to come. The declining number of high school graduates in the Northeast and Midwest, combined with dwindling state support levels, will force schools to evolve their business models.

Just as GM is not doing away with gas-powered cars, colleges and universities will not abandon their core residential degree programs. These residential degree programs, however, will be increasingly joined and supplemented by online programs. Schools have no choice but to go after new markets for students, especially at the master’s level. The full-time master’s student will still exist but in ever-diminishing proportions. The future of graduate school belongs to the adult working professional, and that means online programs.

The question is, will most schools stop at online learning? I don’t think so. We are likely to see an industrywide shift to both alternative online credentials (certificates) and lower-cost online degrees at scale. If online education is like vehicle batteries, alternative credentials and low-cost scaled degrees are like autonomous driving. The future of mobility is not only electric but also self-driving (and perhaps ride sharing).

Today, autonomous vehicles are still controversial. Nobody knows when the self-driving future will arrive, and automakers are pursuing different strategies to develop these technologies. Alternative online credentials and low-cost degrees at scale are similarly controversial within higher ed. Some schools are going all out in creating that future. Others are hanging back. Like auto companies, colleges and universities that wait too long to develop the capabilities for certificates/scaled degrees might find themselves on the wrong side of the future.

What about the electric bicycle from Harley-Davidson? I think that lesson here is about a willingness to experiment. Harley might find that e-bikes serve as a gateway drug to electric motorcycles. Who knows. A technology-forward electric bike will make the Harley brand relevant to a segment of consumers that doesn’t think much about motorcycles.

Too often, colleges and universities are afraid to experiment in adjacent sectors (motorcycles to e-bikes) out of fear of damaging their brands. Many more colleges and universities could be following the lead of Georgia Tech or Boston University or Illinois by offering affordable online degrees at scale. We don’t know if these scaled online programs can be delivered with high quality or if offering them reduces the demand for existing residential programs.

The only way to figure this out, however, is to experiment. If a company as traditional as Harley-Davidson can try something new with an e-bike, shouldn’t we be willing to do the same?

SOURCE: https://www.insidehighered.com/blogs/learning-innovation/hummer-ev-harley-davidson-e-bike-and-higher-ed