Canada-based Northern Graphite Corporation has closed its previously announced acquisition of the producing Lac des Iles graphite mine (LDI) in Québec from a subsidiary of Imerys SA and the Okanjande graphite deposit/Okorusu processing plant in Namibia from a subsidiary of Imerys and its joint venture partner. All deposits have high quality flake graphite that is suitable for all battery and industrial applications.
The acquisitions will provide Northern with 40-50,000 tonnes per year (tpy) of graphite production capacity in Québec and Namibia, which will make it the third-largest non-Chinese natural graphite producing company.
The acquisition of the two mines was financed through US$36 million in debt, royalty and stream financing provided by funds managed by Sprott Resource Streaming and Royalty Corp. and a CDN$23-million equity offering lead by Sprott Capital Partners LP. Sprott invested CDN$3.75 million in the equity offering and Imerys has received US$4 million in equity, on the same terms as the equity offering, as partial payment of the purchase price.
Northern now also has two large-scale development projects, Bissett Creek in Ontario and an expansion of Okanjande in Namibia, which it intends to build to meet growing EV demand. Bissett Creek has been independently rated as the highest margin graphite project in the world. The Okanjande deposit has large measured and indicated resources and the Company intends to assess building a new processing plant with 100-150,000 tpy of production capacity.
As consideration for the acquisition of LDI, which was completed through Northern’s wholly-owned subsidiary Graphite Nordique Inc., the company paid Imerys approximately CDN$17.8 million in cash and issued to Imerys US$4 million worth of units.