China's Xiamen Tungsten to take 20% equity stake in Kingston's Grafoid Inc.

Kingston, Ontario’s Grafoid Inc. has signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) for the establishment of a strategic joint venture partnership with China’s largest producer and exporter of tungsten products, Xiamen Tungsten Co. Ltd., which will see Xiamen take up to a 20% equity stake in privately held Grafoid, pending the completion of due diligence which is set to conclude on May 22, 2016.
Xiamen’s equity position in Grafoid was negotiated through its parent company, Ottawa’s Focus Graphite Inc. (TSX VENTURE:FMS) (OTCQX:FCSMF) (FRANKFURT:FKC), through the purchase of up to 7 million Grafoid common shares currently held by Focus Graphite.
“In addition to providing Grafoid with a strategic partner, Grafoid’s MOU with Xiamen, has benefits for Focus Graphite. When finalized, it will provide additional funding to allow us to advance our overall mine and transformation plant financing, and potentially open the China market to Focus Graphite for additional offtake partners and the sale of value added graphite products,” said Focus Graphite CEO and Director Gary Economo.
“Specifically, this injection of funding could enable Focus Graphite to advance our Lac Knife detailed engineering and finalize the environmental permitting process” said Economo. “And, it enables us to move to the next stage in assembling our mine CAPEX financing.”
Last September, Grafoid and Focus Graphite finalized two offtake agreements for obtaining graphite concentrate from a mining project at Lac Knife in Quebec for the next 10 years, one of the priorities of the Quebec government’s Plan Nord initiative.
Focus Graphite, with 7.9 million shares, is currently Grafoid’s largest stakeholder.
The MOU will also see the establishment of Xiamen’s business office at the Grafoid Global Technology Center in Kingston, providing Xiamen with a North American base for future business expansion, as well as the establishment of a Grafoid business office in China.
Grafoid’s path to commercialization lies in its patented product, a high-quality graphene trading under the name Mesograf.
Other terms of the MOU include the desire of Xiamen to introduce a clean energy technology platform and associated technologies to the Chinese market, and the opportunity for Grafoid to bring its suite of Mesograf and Amphioxide graphene based products to China.
With the Lac Knife project moving forward, Grafoid is well positioned to supply global markets with with high purity, value-added, cost-competitive graphite products while supporting the next generation battery development platform of Grafoid, Focus Graphite, Stria Lithium Inc., and Braille Battery Inc.
With annual revenue surpassing 10.143B CNY ($1.55B US), Xiamen, a publicly traded company listed on the Shanghai Exchange (SHA:600549), is a major player in that country’s smelting, processing and exporting of tungsten and other non-ferrous metal products, the operation of rare earth business interests, and the supply of battery materials.
Grafoid currently has 17 joint partnership ventures with industrial and academic partners, including Japan’s Mitsui & Co., Hydro Quebec, Rutgers University, the University of Waterloo, and Phos Solar Systems in Greece.
Last February, Grafoid received an $8.1 million investment from the SD Tech Fund of Sustainable Development Technology Canada (SDTC) to help automate the production of Mesograf and end-product development.
Earlier this month, Professor Aiping Yu of the University of Waterloo’s Chemical Engineering department received a $450,000 Strategic Partnership Grant through the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) to help Grafoid develop an advanced graphene fiber based wearable supercapacitor.