Northern Graphite Corporation has announced that it has entered into an agreement with Edgewater Capital Partners to acquire an ownership interest in NeoGraf Solutions, LLC. NeoGraf is a leading provider of specialty, value added products manufactured from natural graphite and has a strong intellectual property portfolio and a blue chip customer base. NeoGraf is one of Northern’s largest customers. This investment will enable Northern to integrate downstream into the manufacturing of graphite products for a number of high-growth markets including lithium ion batteries/EVs, fuel cells, graphene and nanomaterials, thermal management in consumer electronics, smart building products and fire retardants.
Under the terms of agreement, Northern has a six month option to acquire an effective 50.1% voting interest and a 33.3% equity interest in NeoGraf and also has an option to increase its interest up to 100% at a later date subject to the terms and conditions of the agreement. Northern has engaged Sprott Capital Partners LP to act as its financial advisor with respect to financing the investment. Closing of Northern’s investment is subject to the execution of definitive agreements, the receipt of all required third party and regulatory approvals including, if applicable, approval of the TSX Venture Exchange and to Northern completing satisfactory financing arrangements.
Hugues Jacquemin, Northern’s CEO, commented, “The NeoGraf transaction is a major step toward integrating downstream to capture a greater share of the value chain and creating an industry leading mine-to-market natural graphite company with the ambition to produce low carbon footprint products.” He added that, “We are very pleased to be partnering with Edgewater, which will enable us to complete the transaction in a very capital efficient manner. The combination of Edgewater’s performance materials expertise and our knowledge of the graphite industry will help enable NeoGraf to achieve its full growth potential.”
“We are very excited to partner with Hugues and the Northern team,” commented Robert Girton, a Partner at Edgewater. “Their investment in NeoGraf clearly demonstrates their ‘mine-to-market’ strategy and enhances the security of supply and value that NeoGraf provides to its blue-chip customer base. Further, the collaboration between the organizations will serve to accelerate and expand the breadth of unique solutions which ultimately enable our customers’ commercial success.”
Drew Walker, CEO of Neograf, commented, “Similar to NeoGraf, Northern is a noted thought leader in the worldwide graphite industry, an industry which sits at the centre of several megatrends that will drive outsized growth opportunities for our products. Together, Northern and NeoGraf will be a powerful combination in the development of high performance technical solutions that address our customer’s application specific needs. Additionally, Northern provides NeoGraf with greater security of supply and expands the geographic regions from which we source our graphite. This will be a key advantage as we execute our shared vision for growth.“
Source:batteryindustry
