The Future?, page-210

Thanks very much for "Digging it Up" in the Mining Journal Fad and sharing it here with us all today, as I / We can't be across everything, all of the time, here's my Favourite bits, especially the bit about "a third string to the bow in South Africa" that's News to Me Frank - Not to mention that last sentence

"SCT, which has designed about 85% of all the hydroxide plants in the world, have said they've never seen such a clean product - just really high grade and no detrimentals of any issue whatsoever.

We have low fluorine, very low phosphorous, the iron is down to 0.4% in the product … and we'll probably get that down further with more tweaking.

There is 2-4% mica in the body itself, but once it's processed it's down to … less than 1.5% mica, and we'll get that down further too."

Following a recent A$10.7 million share placement to Chinese lithium battery raw material developer Yibin Tianyi Lithium, AVZ is advancing early works at Manono and last month called for tenders for about US$300 million of pre-mining infrastructure packages, with contracts to be awarded when AVZ and partners, state-owned Cominiere (25%) and privately-owned Dathomir (15%), make a Financial Investment Decision to mine.

"We are looking at financing options out of Europe, out of the Middle East, where there is strong interest in EV batteries that need a nearby supply of lithium hydroxide, and we also have a third string to the bow in South Africa, where there are also groups very keen to have a battery manufacturing plant there to support their car industry, which is mainly German producers," Ferguson says.

"There are various options related to offtake, downstream processing ventures, development and mainstream finance and equity, that we need to assess.

"There is certainly a very clear realisation that projects of this scale and quality do not come along often and they lend themselves to strategic investment and developments.

"It really starts with a very large, good quality project in Africa, with a solution to get the product out. We see at least two ports on either side of the continent that would give us options to send products - concentrates or containerised sulphate - anywhere we want.

Dar es-Salaam in Tanzania and Lobito in Angola, offer security and the numbers [cost] are looking good at this point.

"Walvis Bay in Namibia is another option … and we're still looking at those end-user options in South Africa.

"The general idea, initially, is to get products to end producers, or converters.

"But then I've always thought this business needs to be fully vertically integrated.

"So, ideally, we go up the value chain, possibly with partners down the track.

Having some sort of hydroxide plant is a logical extension of that and hence we're entertaining the idea of putting a hydroxide plant somewhere in the Middle East or Europe."