You are right by the sounds of it there Aussie, I just got off the phone with Tom. It turns out that the term sheet was NOT signed off on during the allotted period. Therefore no deal is currently in place with LRS. Disappointing as it is, although discussions are ongoing and there will be news on this front shortly.
There may be a different deal in the making regarding the Micas, time will tell. Tom did state to me, that we have no interest in spending money to develop the Spodumene deposits down there, as that is not compatible with LMax and that is our focus.
For the first time I am personally annoyed with LPD as this was not made clear enough to the market IMO.
We did then have an informative discussion thereafter, he's a very smart guy, where he informed me of potential developments to the reporting process, regarding hard rock Lithium in Australia.
Long story short - this is a new industry and mistakes are being made and the industry is learning as it goes. Currently accepted practices look like they are coming under review.
Potential changes could be the greater disclosure of the nature of the reported Lithium bearing minerals being released ie: Spodumene, Petalite, Lepidolite, Ambylygonite, Muscovite etc.
The impression I got was many explorers are lumping all these in together, and reporting all Lithium bearing content as Spodumene grades xxx (primarily is Spod but there's Micas also) and at a later stage will/are finding difficulties in the concentrating of this material due to the Mica content and Tom cited Mt Cattlin's relatively low concentration as a case in point that "from the outside" it seems they may be having these problems as we speak and that many others will likely face this issue down the line (differs with the mineralogy of each deposit) when beginning large scale Spodumene concentration.
Offtake discussions and testing is ongoing, with regards to sourcing suitable feedstock for LMax. My definite impression was that Lithium bearing Mica, as tailings, will be abundant and there will be no shortage of potential feedstock moving forward.
Could not comment regarding the receipt or not of the LIT response to counterclaim, said it is a legal process that is in the hands of the lawyers and he is unable to discuss any further details on that front, at this stage.
They are thrilled with the current testing going on and commented on the high grades and the premium in price that such grades can attract and the most pleasing thing is that these results are being achieved consistently throughout the testing.
I apologise to anyone that I may have personally misled by my comments regarding the LRS JV, this came as a shock to me and i made that very point to Tom.
I'm still in, as I'm a strong believer in the opportunity to process high grade Lithium from cheaply sourced Mica tailings, and the noted ability to start off relatively small and scale the LMax process over time with the revenue generated. That is a business model that makes sense to me. But I am disappointed regarding LRS. GLTA
Expand
(20min delay)