Outlines Development of Battery-Graphite
Manufacturing Business in Alabama
Westwater Resources, Inc. (“Westwater,” or the
“Company”) (Nasdaq:WWR)
, a green energy
materials development company, announced today that it has issued
its business plan for producing advanced graphite products for
battery manufacturers through its wholly-owned subsidiary Alabama
Graphite Company, Inc. (AGC). The AGC business plan can be found on
Westwater’s website: www.westwaterresources.net.
On April 23, 2018, Westwater acquired AGC as
part of a strategic decision to refocus the Company to supply
battery manufacturers with low-cost, advanced, high-quality, and
high-margin graphite products. The principal asset acquired is the
Coosa Graphite Project (“Coosa Project”), which includes the Coosa
Graphite mine located near Sylacauga, Alabama, 50 miles southeast
of Birmingham. The Coosa mine is located in an area that has been a
past producer of graphite, utilizing a geology trend spanning tens
of thousands of acres, known as the “Alabama Graphite Belt.” The
State of Alabama remains a friendly business jurisdiction,
exemplified by successfully securing a $1 billion commitment from
Daimler Benz to build a lithium-ion battery factory near its
automobile assembly plant in the state.
Christopher M. Jones, President and Chief
Executive Officer of Westwater Resources, said, “We are issuing our
business plan for Alabama Graphite to provide investors guidance on
how we plan on moving the Coosa Project forward. We believe
that graphite has an important strategic place in the global
economy, as graphite continues to be a commodity in high demand as
electric automobiles and the batteries that power them increase
production. We are working with over 30 potential customers,
several of which have qualification samples in hand as a first step
towards potential sales; this plan outlines our anticipated pathway
towards providing returns to investors over the intermediate to
long-term.”
Mr. Jones added, “In summary, our Company’s
broad base of manufacturing, mining, and processing expertise from
graphite, base and precious metals to energy materials is our key
competitive advantage. Over the last 40-plus years, members of the
Westwater team have operated mining, processing, and manufacturing
facilities ranging in size from small to more than a billion
dollars in revenue and management believes they have the experience
required to successfully execute this business plan.”
Major components of the business plan include
constructing a processing facility that purifies readily available
graphite concentrates to 99.95% pure carbon. The proposed
construction is planned for 2020 based upon pilot-plant operating
data developed in 2019 and using industry standard
processes. Once the graphite is purified, the material
is further processed into the three component products which
provide graphite materials with enhanced conductivity performance
for battery manufacturers: Purified Micronized Graphite (PMG),
Delaminated Expanded Graphite (DEXDG), and Coated Spherical
Purified Graphite (CSPG).
At the same time, the Company will be developing
the Coosa Graphite mine (planned for start-up 2026) on its
40,000-plus-acre mineral-rights holdings that can serve as a hedge
against future feedstock costs and provide in-house quality
assurance and quality control (QA/QC) for raw-material inputs.
To view the full AGC business plan, please go to
www.westwaterresources.net.
About Westwater ResourcesWWR is focused on
developing energy-related materials. The Company’s battery
materials projects include the Coosa Graphite Project and the
associated Coosa Graphite Mine located across 41,900 acres in
east-central Alabama. In addition, the Company maintains
lithium mineral properties in three prospective lithium brine
basins in Nevada and Utah. WWR’s uranium projects are located
in Texas, New Mexico and the Republic of Turkey. In Texas,
the Company has two licensed and currently idled uranium processing
facilities and approximately 11,000 acres (4,400 ha) of prospective
in-situ recovery uranium projects. In New Mexico, the Company
controls mineral rights encompassing approximately 188,700 acres
(76,394 ha) in the prolific Grants Mineral Belt, which is one of
the largest concentrations of sandstone-hosted uranium deposits in
the world. Incorporated in 1977 as Uranium Resources, Inc.,
WWR also owns an extensive uranium information database of historic
drill hole logs, assay certificates, maps and technical reports for
the Western United States. For more information, visit
www.westwaterresources.net.
Cautionary StatementThis news
release contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of
the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995.
Forward-looking statements are subject to risks, uncertainties and
assumptions and are identified by words such as “expects,”
“estimates,” “projects,” “anticipates,” “believes,” “could,” and
other similar words. All statements addressing events or
developments that WWR expects or anticipates will occur in the
future, including but not limited to statements relating to the
Company’s growth, developments at the Company’s projects, including
future exploration costs and results, intent and timing of new and
existing programs and testing, the potential improvements contained
in WWR’s business plan for the Coosa Graphite Project, the future
production of graphite, including on a pilot scale, and future
sales of graphite, including as a first mover for key components of
electrical storage devices, future returns to WWR investors, and
the Company’s liquidity and cash demands, including future capital
markets financing and disposition activities, are forward-looking
statements. Because they are forward-looking, they
should be evaluated in light of important risk factors and
uncertainties. These risk factors and uncertainties include,
but are not limited to, (a) the Company’s ability to successfully
integrate AGC’s business into its own, and the risk that additional
analysis of the Coosa Graphite Project may result in revisions to
the business plan for the Coosa Graphite Project; (b) the Company’s
ability to raise additional capital in the future; (c) spot price
and long-term contract price of graphite, uranium and lithium; (d)
risks associated with our foreign and domestic operations; (e)
operating conditions at the Company’s projects; (f) government and
tribal regulation of the graphite industry, uranium industry, the
lithium industry, and the power industry; (g) world-wide graphite,
uranium and lithium supply and demand, including the supply and
demand for lithium-based batteries; (h) maintaining sufficient
financial assurance in the form of sufficiently collateralized
surety instruments; (i) unanticipated geological, processing,
regulatory and legal or other problems the Company may encounter in
the jurisdictions where the Company operates or intends to operate,
including in Alabama, Texas, New Mexico, Utah, Nevada and the
Republic of Turkey; (j) the ability of the Company to enter into
and successfully close acquisitions or other material transactions,
(k) the results of the Company’s lithium brine exploration
activities at the Columbus Basin, Railroad Valley, and Sal Rica
projects, and the possibility that future exploration results may
be materially less promising than initial exploration result; (I)
any graphite, lithium or uranium discoveries not being in high
enough concentration to make it economic to extract the metals; and
(m) other factors which are more fully described in the Company’s
Annual Report on Form 10-K, Quarterly Reports on Form 10-Q, and
other filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Should
one or more of these risks or uncertainties materialize or should
any of the Company’s underlying assumptions prove incorrect, actual
results may vary materially from those currently anticipated. In
addition, undue reliance should not be placed on the Company’s
forward-looking statements. Except as required by law, the Company
disclaims any obligation to update or publicly announce any
revisions to any of the forward-looking statements contained in
this news release. The results of the initial optimization study
are preliminary in nature and subject to revision following WWR’s
further analysis of the Coosa project.
Westwater Resources Contact: |
Investor Relations Contact: |
Christopher M. Jones, President & CEO |
Michael Porter |
Phone: 303.531.0480 |
Porter, LeVay and Rose |
Jeff Vigil, VP Finance & CFO |
Phone: 212.564.4700 |
Phone: 303.531.0481 |
|
Email: Info@WestwaterResources.net |
Email: Westwater@plrinvest.com |
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