Thought I'd add specifically to this point b4bmm. Looking through @Papillons summary, I have to somewhat apologetically remind him that he seems to have missed one question - mine (how about that!). I asked about the supposed supply chain capacity for producing spherical, given that the main supply chain is almost solely through China and Japan. Was there enough commercial infrastructure to manufacture north of 100ktpa of spherical ex China?
Len's answer was that there would be no capacity restraints. There are European, Asian and North American (at this stage, informal) JV partners underpinning supply chains into their respective markets. There supply chain arrangements were to be formalised down the track at an appropriate time (I recommend looking into C4V for a better informal understanding).
There is current capacity to meet potential offtake demand, but also an ability to build facilities specific to end user requirements. This notion goes as far back as the April 8 announcement from this year. It's also a reference to the Macquarie Research report that floated the idea of a Tanzanian based processing facility. Depending on the customer requirements, the technology can be out in place anywhere around the world. The obviating of the chemical processing step meant a lot of environmental regulations that would normally inhibit the scalability of facilities would be a non-issue, and there would also be a reduction in technical risk associated with the production of anode material. Fewer steps in the creation of spherical reduces the potential amount of things that could go wrong.
There's more on this but as always I'm out of time. Enjoy the weekend everyone
MNS Price at posting:
75.0¢ Sentiment: Buy Disclosure: Held
(20min delay)