Blencowe Resources (LSE: BRES.L) (“Blencowe” or the “Company”) is pleased to announce its engagement with a leading graphite industry specialist, Lone Star Tech Minerals – USA (“Lone Star”), effective immediately.  Lone Star is based in the United States and will assist Blencowe with all parts of its sales and marketing strategy, including analysis of concentrates, technical specifications, review of the broader graphite market, identification of products and opportunities, and assisting in building key relationships with end users that can ultimately lead to key product qualifications and sale of product once mining operations commence.

Lone Star is headed by Christopher Whiteley, acknowledged as one of the leading graphite sales and marketing specialists in this industry.  Mr Whiteley has over 25 years of sales and technical graphite and carbon products experience, which Blencowe will draw on as it continues to develop its Orom-Cross Graphite Project in Uganda.  He has held senior positions in a number of industry leading companies in the graphite market and has successfully implemented global marketing and sales initiatives for a wide range of graphite applications including traditional and advanced graphite product end uses.

Blencowe is currently building its sales and marketing strategy for Orom-Cross and will draw upon all of Lone Star’s experience as well as its strategic relationships in the industry.  Graphite is a unique product in terms of sale as it has over 150 applications for different uses in various end products, and understanding all of these applications as well as the best mix of end products to produce is critical to the success of the project.  Sales are also made directly into end users, as opposed to selling into a London metals market or similar for other metals, and having the means to tap into end-user relationships via an experienced partner is important.

The Company delivered a strong Preliminary Economic Assessment (PEA) for Orom-Cross in October 2021 and has recently announced a successful, over-subscribed £2 million capital raise, which will fund its Pre-Feasibility Study (PFS) that has already commenced and will be due for completion around middle of 2022.  The Sales and Marketing Strategy will form an integral part of the PFS.

Cameron Pearce, Executive Chairman commented:

“We are extremely fortunate to have a project of the calibre of Orom-Cross, which has the quality and characteristics to attract a partner such as Lone Star, to assist us ahead. Lone Star has already identified that Orom-Cross has a unique blend of traditional graphite products that will likely sit well within the broader graphite market and we will now work closely together to build and then implement the strategy to ensure that we can successfully sell these products into that market.

Graphite is a non-replaceable, key component of the lithium-ion batteries that provide the energy to power electric vehicles (EVs), and as EV growth continues to expand exponentially over the next decade demand for graphite is forecast to increase fast in parallel.  In addition Orom-Cross has a good percentage of jumbo and large flake graphite that sell for considerable higher prices into speciality markets, thus providing a valuable mix of end products to achieve higher overall margins.”