Good News & Bad News, page-8409

Our COO, Dale Henderson spoke at the IMARC Conference today.

It was just a general explanation of the Company. We have to love the title though:

PLS aims to become one of the worlds biggest producers.

Considering Albermarle has a MC of $A20b and SQM $A8b, that's some statement just there.


Summarily he spoke about:

Plans to triple output because of ...
1. Cost advantage
2. Resource is huge
3. Strong top shelf partners

In 5 years, his stated expectations were ...
1. Will get bigger
2. Reduce costs further
3. Downstream integration
4. Green theme, enabling renewables, solar PV being designed

It was Point 4 here that was new and undoubtedly linked to ESG commitments. It would seem the plan is to turn the plant's power source into solar/battery based. Dale said it was still at the research stage though.

Environmentally friendly production, is becoming a big factor in Lithium production. Musk and his crew went to some lengths to talk about that on TB Day, as have other industry commentators.The end EV/ESS product may be environmentally friendly but the Lithium production (both hard rock and brine) has its concerns.

The PLS team are actively addressing this concern. A contributing factor to get the ESG funding was PLS's net carbon zero plan.

Direct Lithium Extraction (DLE), IMHO is the future of Lithium extraction ... but it will be a long while before it can be done cost competitive, to compete with PLS.


Dale spoke well for the first half but nerves seem to get the better of him half way through. He's very young but I thought it a big improvement from his Mar19 interview with KB and Joe Lowry.

I get the feeling he may succeed Ken as CEO, when Ken moves on to replace Big Tony.