KEMET Blue Powder Corporation Meets All Conflict-Free Smelter Site Requirements

GREENVILLE, S.C., March 1, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- KEMET Corporation (NYSE: KEM), a leading manufacturer of tantalum, ceramic, aluminum, film, paper and electrolytic capacitors, today announced its guarantee and commitment to all customers that all KEMET tantalum capacitors will be manufactured only from conflict-free tantalum. The recently announced acquisition of the Carson City, Nevada, USA tantalum capacitor powder manufacturing facility from Denham Capital LLC created a unique opportunity for KEMET to further secure this guarantee.  

The tantalum capacitor manufacturing facility, now known as KEMET Blue Powder Corporation (KBP), is site compliant with all requirements of the EICC/GeSi Conflict Free Smelter (CFS) Program. The facility was audited by a EICC/GeSi authorized third-party in the Fall of 2010 and was found to meet all CFS site requirements. At the time of the audit, some of the site raw material suppliers were awaiting their CFS audits, thereby creating a barrier to full compliance as stipulated per the CFS Program. With this acquisition, KEMET has ceased relationships with any non-CFS compliant raw material suppliers and will immediately source raw materials strictly from CFS compliant suppliers. 

The acquisition also brought exclusive rights to secure raw material from a new supplier, Tantalite Resources, in South Africa (TR). As this facility is yet to be brought fully on-line and therefore has no prior history, the CFS audit poses no issues to the KEMET conflict-free guarantee. TR will process conflict-free ore sourced from the KEMET associated mine in Kisengo in the conflict-free Katanga Province of the Democratic Republic of Congo. As such, KEMET guarantees that any raw material sourced for KBP to be conflict-free. KBP will not process any raw material from TR for commercial use prior to TR passing a third-party audit and all other applicable CFS compliance requirements, thereby ensuring KBP meets all of the raw material supplier requirements for CFS compliance.

KEMET expects that its vertically-integrated tantalum supply chain will meet all the requirements of section 1502 of Dodd-Frank and awaits the issue of this overdue rule from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

About KEMET

KEMET's common stock is listed on the NYSE under the symbol "KEM." At the Investor Relations section of our web site at http://ir.KEMET.com, users may subscribe to KEMET news releases and find additional information about our Company. KEMET applies world class service and quality to deliver industry leading, high performance capacitance solutions to its customers around the world and offers the world's most complete line of surface mount and through-hole capacitor technologies across tantalum, ceramic, film, aluminum, electrolytic, and paper dielectrics. Additional information about KEMET can be found at http://www.kemet.com.

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SOURCE KEMET Corporation