---
title: "Lac Carheil: Canada's Next Integrated Graphite Play — Metals Australia (ASX:MLS)"
description: "Homodeus Research speaks with Paul Ferguson, CEO of Metals Australia (ASX: MLS), about the Lac Carheil Graphite Project in Quebec — a high-grade flake graphite resource and a planned battery anode material (BAM) refinery that management positions as Canada's next fully integrated, mine-to-anode graphite play. Paul covers the upstream mine near Fermont, the downstream refinery planned for Baie-Comeau (subject of a Preliminary Economic Assessment released 28 April 2026), the grade advantage over peer Nouveau Monde Graphite, Canada's critical minerals funding backdrop, and the structural demand case for natural graphite in lithium-ion battery anodes. 🎧 Listen / read research: https://homodeus.one 🔗 Company: https://metalsaustralia.com.au ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ CHAPTERS ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 0:00 Introduction & Paul Ferguson's background 2:00 Metals Australia overview & project portfolio 6:00 The Quebec graphite project: an integrated mine-to-anode solution 8:30 Downstream BAM refinery at Baie-Comeau (PEA) 10:00 Upstream mine, the resource & mineral endowment 12:30 Resource scale: ~5.1Mt and decades of supply potential 14:00 Demand outlook & Canada's critical minerals plan 15:00 The flake graphite concentrate plant & PFS 17:00 Conservative pricing vs Canada's announced floor price 18:00 Downstream refinery economics (~A$2bn NPV) 20:00 Benchmarking MLS against Nouveau Monde Graphite 26:00 Next steps: PFS, feasibility study & environmental work 29:00 Q&A: Canadian & Quebec government support 33:00 PFS timeline and what's left to do 34:00 Nouveau Monde's FID — the read-through for MLS 36:00 Natural vs synthetic graphite 38:00 Policy, tariffs & the macro backdrop 40:00 Countering China's supply-chain dominance 42:00 Q&A: supply/demand and the PFS → FEED → FID timeline 46:00 Cash balance & quarterly spend 48:00 The path to first off-take agreements 50:30 Closing remarks ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ KEY POINTS DISCUSSED ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ - Lac Carheil resource: ~50Mt at ~10.2% Cg for ~5.1Mt contained graphite, drawn from ~2.3km of a ~36km mapped strike - Upstream: ~860,000 tpa plant producing ~100,000 tpa of flake graphite concentrate - Downstream BAM refinery: ~51,000 tpa product, ~25-year life, PEA after-tax NPV-8 of ~US$1.39bn (~A$1.98bn) - ~US$884m (C$1.26bn) refinery capex, with a ~US$260m clean-tech investment tax credit rebate - How MLS compares with Nouveau Monde on grade, plant size, capex and downstream NPV - Canada's critical minerals plan: five graphite mines + five CSPG refineries targeted by 2040 - Government support: a C$600k Quebec grant, mineral exploration tax credits, clean manufacturing ITCs - Natural vs synthetic graphite, China's anode supply-chain dominance, and the tariff/policy backdrop - Cash (~A$4.4m at end-March), the PFS due mid-2026, and the off-take pathway Guest: Paul Ferguson, CEO, Metals Australia Ltd (ASX: MLS) Host: Wei, Homodeus Research #graphite #criticalminerals #ASX ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ DISCLAIMER ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ This video is produced by Homodeus Research and is general information only. It does not constitute personal financial advice and does not take into account your objectives, financial situation or needs. The views expressed by the guest are their own. Consider the appropriateness of any information having regard to your circumstances and seek professional advice before making any investment decision. [Insert AFSL/CAR disclosure, analyst certification and any holdings/sponsorship disclosure as required.]"
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published_date: "2026-05-24T04:47:57+00:00"
modified_date: "2026-08-03T10:30:06.288Z"
thumbnail_url: "https://i4.ytimg.com/vi/KaLfijnssZQ/hqdefault.jpg"
embed_url: "https://www.youtube.com/embed/KaLfijnssZQ"
source_url: "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KaLfijnssZQ"
access: "full"
source: "Homodeus Research"
---

# Lac Carheil: Canada's Next Integrated Graphite Play — Metals Australia (ASX:MLS)

Published 2026-05-24T04:47:57+00:00.

Homodeus Research speaks with Paul Ferguson, CEO of Metals Australia (ASX: MLS), about the Lac Carheil Graphite Project in Quebec — a high-grade flake graphite resource and a planned battery anode material (BAM) refinery that management positions as Canada's next fully integrated, mine-to-anode graphite play.

Paul covers the upstream mine near Fermont, the downstream refinery planned for Baie-Comeau (subject of a Preliminary Economic Assessment released 28 April 2026), the grade advantage over peer Nouveau Monde Graphite, Canada's critical minerals funding backdrop, and the structural demand case for natural graphite in lithium-ion battery anodes.

🎧 Listen / read research: https://homodeus.one
🔗 Company: https://metalsaustralia.com.au

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
CHAPTERS
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
0:00 Introduction & Paul Ferguson's background
2:00 Metals Australia overview & project portfolio
6:00 The Quebec graphite project: an integrated mine-to-anode solution
8:30 Downstream BAM refinery at Baie-Comeau (PEA)
10:00 Upstream mine, the resource & mineral endowment
12:30 Resource scale: ~5.1Mt and decades of supply potential
14:00 Demand outlook & Canada's critical minerals plan
15:00 The flake graphite concentrate plant & PFS
17:00 Conservative pricing vs Canada's announced floor price
18:00 Downstream refinery economics (~A$2bn NPV)
20:00 Benchmarking MLS against Nouveau Monde Graphite
26:00 Next steps: PFS, feasibility study & environmental work
29:00 Q&A: Canadian & Quebec government support
33:00 PFS timeline and what's left to do
34:00 Nouveau Monde's FID — the read-through for MLS
36:00 Natural vs synthetic graphite
38:00 Policy, tariffs & the macro backdrop
40:00 Countering China's supply-chain dominance
42:00 Q&A: supply/demand and the PFS → FEED → FID timeline
46:00 Cash balance & quarterly spend
48:00 The path to first off-take agreements
50:30 Closing remarks

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
KEY POINTS DISCUSSED
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
- Lac Carheil resource: ~50Mt at ~10.2% Cg for ~5.1Mt contained graphite, drawn from ~2.3km of a ~36km mapped strike
- Upstream: ~860,000 tpa plant producing ~100,000 tpa of flake graphite concentrate
- Downstream BAM refinery: ~51,000 tpa product, ~25-year life, PEA after-tax NPV-8 of ~US$1.39bn (~A$1.98bn)
- ~US$884m (C$1.26bn) refinery capex, with a ~US$260m clean-tech investment tax credit rebate
- How MLS compares with Nouveau Monde on grade, plant size, capex and downstream NPV
- Canada's critical minerals plan: five graphite mines + five CSPG refineries targeted by 2040
- Government support: a C$600k Quebec grant, mineral exploration tax credits, clean manufacturing ITCs
- Natural vs synthetic graphite, China's anode supply-chain dominance, and the tariff/policy backdrop
- Cash (~A$4.4m at end-March), the PFS due mid-2026, and the off-take pathway

Guest: Paul Ferguson, CEO, Metals Australia Ltd (ASX: MLS)
Host: Wei, Homodeus Research

#graphite #criticalminerals #ASX

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
DISCLAIMER
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
This video is produced by Homodeus Research and is general information only. It does not constitute personal financial advice and does not take into account your objectives, financial situation or needs. The views expressed by the guest are their own. Consider the appropriateness of any information having regard to your circumstances and seek professional advice before making any investment decision. [Insert AFSL/CAR disclosure, analyst certification and any holdings/sponsorship disclosure as required.]

Watch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KaLfijnssZQ