November 19, 2014 — In a special InvestorIntel interview,
Tracy Weslosky, Editor-in-Chief and Publisher for InvestorIntel interviews
Greg Bowes,
B.Sc.,
MBA –
CEO and
Director of
Northern Graphite Corp. (TSXV:
NGC |
OTCQX: NGPHF) on their recent news surrounding Northern Graphite opening a source battery research and testing facility.
Tracy Weslosky: You just recently announced some very exciting news about a new battery testing and research facility. Can you please tell me more about this announcement?
Greg Bowes:
Yes. We're quite excited about it. I mean, the ultimate goal I think for all graphite companies is we want to see electric vehicles succeed and part of that is we need better batteries. We need lower cost batteries. We need more environmentally friendly processing techniques and that is what this facility is designed to achieve.
Tracy Weslosky: So correct me if I'm wrong Greg, your facility is going to be in
Tennessee, is that correct?
Greg Bowes: That is correct.
Tracy Weslosky: So perhaps I'm projecting here, but there's numerous advantages to being located in Tennessee, is there not? I mean, wasn't the
Saturn GM factory built in Tennessee?
Greg Bowes: Well, that may be true, but unfortunately it's probably more of a coincidence. The main reason it's in Tennessee is Dr.
Edward Buiel who is leading our research and managing this facility, he already has a setup there. We have--- He's recently added a lot of equipment to that facility. Part of that is the result of work that he's doing for us. There is other equipment that we are going to be adding. He already had all the infrastructure, the people, everything there and so that is one of the reasons we partnered with him. That is why it is in Tennessee.
Tracy Weslosky:
Today I went onto Dr. Buiel's website to do some research. I see he's got over 30 year’s professional experience specifically in the lithium-ion and battery storage area. Can you give us more background?
Greg Bowes: Yes. If we go back a couple of years, obviously the graphite companies were a new story and the lithium-ion batteries and all that good stuff. We wanted to demonstrate that our graphite would make a good quality anode material for batteries. There are no impurities. There are no fatal flaws in the material.
We can produce it in a cost competitive manner. What we found out when we tried to go through that process is there is no one stop shop where you can just go and have all of that work done. We had it done by a patchwork of different consultants, manufacturers in
Canada, the
U.S.,
Japan,
China and it was a very slow complicated expensive process, but we ultimately did get to the end where we have produced spherical graphite, which is the product that is used to make the anodes and lithium-ion batteries. We've actually tested it in cells and it works very, very well. We just thought we've already been through all this process.
We are very comfortable with the quality of our graphite, the quality of our product and the results we are getting. We decided we would make our experience, our experience, our knowledge, our expertise available to everybody else in the industry because, again, we want better batteries. We want lower cost batteries. We want higher growth rates in the use of lithium-ion batteries and ultimately electric vehicles and that benefits everybody.
To hear the rest of the interview, click here
Disclaimer: Northern Graphite Corp. (TSXV:
HGC | OTCQX: NGPHF) is an advertorial member of InvestorIntel.
- published: 19 Nov 2014
- views: 461