Running discussion on SP, page-1493

This doesn't surprise me, because the growth will come from hard rock plays. What people don't understand by and large is that for brine projects there are 10 to 15 units of potassium to each unit of lithium therefore project economics is actually driven more so there by what is happening in the potash market as against the lithium market. Be mindful that most brine projects have a LI20 content of much less than 0.5% so a lot of evaporation required to get you to a required grade and that takes time too. Take SQM, if you look at their annual reports you'll see that potash/agricultural sales account for more than 1/2 of its revenue and in fact lithium sales are less than 30% of its revenue. You can't just ramp up lithium production from brine operations because you can then tank your potash prices.

Anyway, this is before we get into debate as to whether brine is elastic to demand needs (since it takes time to produce) and whether brine can address its impurity issues that limit its impact in the growing lithium hydroxide market. SQM taking a stake in KDR IMO showed what the growth area is going to be - i.e. Hard rock plays. This post is not specific to AVZ but thought I would provide a perspective on the emergence of hard rock plays. If anyone is interested on the basis of these blabbering where i go into a little more detail refer to post: 31661029

The other thing on the graph is that when those types of graphs are always done, they are generally done on what the companies may like to do but what they may like to do is not backed up by bankable studies that show what they want to do is economic in the prevailing conditions. All IMO

As I said these blabbering are. Not specific to AVZ, but hard rock plays in general. All IMO