New board appointments in recent months suggest there could be a significant year ahead, with the recent addition of Alex Molyneux particularly noteworthy.

Former investment banker Molyneux is relatively high profile in the ASX resources sector, and he oversaw a good success last month at Galena Mining when 40% of Galena's lead project was sold to Japanese lead and zinc smelting company Toho Zinc for A$90 million.

At Comet, Molyneux and fellow recent board appointee David Prentice are involved with a graphite-graphene play.

Long-time Comet director Tony Cooper told the RIU Exploration Conference that MoUs and collaboration agreements were seen in the pipeline this year, with Comet's Springdale graphite project (near Ravensthorpe) reporting a maiden resource in December.

The beauty of Springdale is its grade and its apparent amenability to convert into graphene and/or other high value uses such as in battery anodes.

According to Cooper, graphene values can currently range from $1-50 per gram, with Comet having high-grade resources of 2.6 million tonnes grading 17.5% TGC.

Meanwhile the project's exploration upside will be further probed next week with the arrival of a drill rig.

Shares in Comet were trading at 4c this week, up from 3c earlier this month.

At 4c the company is capitalised at $9 million.

Comet, which returned $34 million to shareholders after the nickel divestment all those years ago, started 2019 with $800,000 cash.