Mason President and CEO, Benoit Gascon explaining the principals of graphite to Larry King (Photo: Mason Graphite Inc.)

Mason President and CEO, Benoit Gascon explaining the principals of graphite to Larry King (Photo: Mason Graphite Inc.)

Mason Graphite (LLG:TSXV) which is developing the high-grade, large flake, Lac Gueret graphite deposit in Quebec has closed the first tranche of their investment in NanoXplore who holds a proprietary technology for cost-effectively producing graphene from graphite.  Mason announced today that it has closed the first $350,000 for 20% of NanoXplore.  Mason's President and CEO, Benoit Gascon and CFO, Luc Veilleux were appointed Chairman and CFO of NanoXplore, respectively.  Furthermore, Mason has been appointed the sales, marketing and distribution agent for the products produced from NanoXplore.

"We are excited to officially embark on our venture with NanoXplore," commented
Mr. Gascon, president and chief executive officer of Mason Graphite. "We believe
that our combined experts and projects will result in strong synergies, with an
opportunity to pair our potential low-cost flake graphite from the Lac Gueret
project with potentially low-cost graphene production from NanoXplore's
proprietary process."

Mason is acquiring a total of a 40% interest in NanoXplore for a total of $700,000.  The private company has developed a proprietary technique is a low-cost, low-energy, safe and scalable electrochemical conversion method, which turns natural-flake graphite into
graphene.  Other methods for turning graphite into graphene have proved to be uneconomic and not scalable.

Shares are up over 122% in the past 3 months as the company derisked their Lac Gueret project by completing an updated resource estimate and metallurgy work which saw resources grow by over 650%.  The company is currently working on developing a detailed scoping study which should see capex remain in the $90 million range.  If the company is able to resolve the financing overhang associated with that $90 million price-tag, shares should continue higher.

Here's the short-term chart:

LLG Chart
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Read: Mason Graphite Closes First Tranche of its Investment in Group Nanoxplore Inc.