The Great Occasion

''The question was whether, as Professor [Robert] Bates put it, 'the IM Congress of 1974 will become the first of a series - or go down in a blaze of glory as a one-time operation,''' the coverage of the first Congress mused. Selling natural graphite is not easy, especially when selling a new graphite mine's full capacity of all the different qualities it produces. [Asbury Carbons] signed an exclusive sales and marketing agreement in 1988 with the original investors of the 'Stratmin Graphite Mine' in Lac-des-lles, Quebec, Canada and closed our smaller graphite mine 'Graphite Asbury Quebec'. Going back to 2006 when we restarted Sierra Rutile, we saw very flat pricing until 2010 brought about by legacy contracts. By the end of 2011, prices had more than doubled compared to 2010 and at the start of 2012 they doubled again. Prices continued to appreciate until mid-2012 and then gradually drifted down to the levels we see today. However these levels are still considerably higher than those seen at the end of the legacy contract ''era''.