Zenyatta ventures.

• Position: NEWS - Mineral deposit specialists graphite research

Is Zenyatta Ventures' discovery of a high-grade graphite deposit really a one-off? That's what Lakehead University's Andrew Conly has been tasked to find out.

The Thunder Bay-based junior miner decided to tap into the collected wisdom of the university's geology department back in 2011 to figure out exactly what they had found at its Albany project. 30 kilometres north of the Trans-Canada Highway near the communities of Constance Lake First Nation and Hearst.

The area had been relatively under-explored when Zenyatta came rolling through looking for nickel and copper.

Conly, a mineral deposit specialist in base metals, had no experience in graphite, but he was well-versed in the earthly mechanical processes that produce these deposits.

This was definitely something unique. "I'd never seen anything like this," said Conly, who examined some sections of the finely crystalized ore and "really clean looking" rock.

The formation and the discovery of the deposit, and its two breccia pipes, hundreds of metres wide, that delivered this carbon coming straight from the earth's mantle, has often been compared to a diamond find.

"What we're looking at here is the core to a major volcanic complex," said Con_ly.

The deposit is beneath a thick veneer of about 40 metres of James Bay lowlands' sand, gravel and limestone, so there are no telltale signs on surface.

The company claims this "rare hydrothermal or vein type deposit," that's 99 per cent pure, is the largest and only known graphite deposit of its type under development in the world.

There are three types of graphite deposits: flake, amorphous and hydrothermal.

Hydrothermal graphite is the purest and cleanest form there is, and it's also . very rare.

What Zenyatta uncovered with Albany is something not seen outside of Sri Lanka in more than 150 years.

This discovery has garnered Zenyatta plenty of accolades over the last two years, including being named the Discovery of the Year Award by the Ontario Prospectors Association in 2013. The company has also taken home the TSX Venture Exchange's award for the Top Performing Company two years consecutively.

Last December. with Conly's help, Zenyatta released a mineral resource estimate for Albany with an indicated count of 25.1 million tonnes at an average grade of 3.89 per cent graphitic carbon containing 977.000 tonnes, and an inferred estimate of 20.1 million tonnes at an average grade of 2.20 per...