Here is what was said in the meeting. To me it sounds like step 1 is to have the money, step 2 is for the investors to complete their due diligence and step 3 is for Galaxy to agree. 3 to 6 months was the quoted timeline on Jan 24th 2019.
Nick Herbert
Okay, great, thank you. And just on Sal de Vida, what’s the expected revise timing around getting to a decision point given that you’ve now got those bids in and I guess extension of that, what happens in the event that you deem those bids unacceptable and are you confident that you could actually develop the projects without a strategic partner on board?
Anthony Tse
Okay. So, in terms of the process Nick, obviously one of the key criteria apart from kind of the transaction structure and valuation and everything else, in terms of the level of due diligence, one of the major milestones that many of the investors would like to at least see complete is actually the full and final settlement of the POSCO transaction, and as Alan kind of referred to earlier, we’ve actually already completed the registrations in Catamarca and I was actually in Argentina in the first kind of week or so of this year just following up on the Salta registrations that we need to complete, and those registrations of documentation is actually in good order, but the Argentine kind of departments in Salta as the mining core specifically is actually on break until the first of February.
And so, from what we understand there is a little bit of backlog in terms of applications actually need to be processed in Salta and we’re working with the authorities to see what we can do to actually get that expedited. But as I Alan mentioned, there is $257 million sitting in the balance sheet and that is obviously an integral part of the evaluation as those investors consider the transaction. Secondly, I think we’re confident that we have among the group of people who've submitted proposals as well as potentially the ones who are yet to submit and obviously just working through kind of their due diligence as well. It’s obviously taking a little bit longer than expected, but I think irrespective, I think we also have today as Alan mentioned before, a balance sheet, which is actually in a much, much stronger position than the company has even been.
Coming back to the overall timeline, I think, we had originally budgeted something, which was along the lines of about three years and that three years plus if you, as you would appreciate every single prime project takes a fair amount of time to actually ramp up, normally kind of two years to three years to get into steady state. That is a 5, 6-year process and even over a 5-year process you think about it in months. That’s actually 60 months. So, if we actually end up taking an extra 6-months to kind of – finding the right partner. But also, not only the right partner, but the structure as well for the transaction.
I mean, we firmly believe that Sal de Vida is very much a world-class asset. It is one of the best undeveloped assets in the world within the lithium space. And we really do want to get it right both from the partnership, the structure, as well as the process. And so, we think that this world-class asset is going to be kind of our flagship going forward, and so that’s why in whole scheme of things if we end up taking an extra 3 to 6 months or whatever, especially get that recipe right in terms of the partnership and the development plan for the project going forward. I think that’s kind of where we want to be.
