Yep, once again, negative marketing is negative marketing. Market thrives off fear and as expected on the small cap side of things, there is more misalignment between the information investors have access to and hence, the expected sell-off. Appears all potash stocks are stacked with sellers waiting to have orders executed across the board.
Actually feel for SO4s shareholders, Tony's actions could by classified as criminal by ASIC. Misleading investors continually on twitter, yet I suspect he may be able to escape legal consequences if SO4 does manage to produce at least 1kg of SOP out of the plant. He never guaranteed meeting any production targets, just getting SOP out of the plant. He could just classify that brine flow rates, bond seepage, technicla difficulties were risks investors need to take. Adding on to that, why the heck has a formal annoucement not been made on the ASX for SO4s stiuation, it appears the news had seeped in from the AIM in London
Here's the AFR article today. Australia’s nascent potash industry has suffered a setback, with the frontrunner set to tap shareholders for more funds amid operational problems.Salt Lake Potash boss Tony Swiericzuk had expected to begin sustainable production of a specialty potash product in the second week of June, but the company has not been able to maintain consistent output at the levels expected.In a UK market filing on Tuesday, Salt Lake Potash said it would shortly announce “a substantial downgrade in production estimates for the year ending 30 June 2022”.The company had expected to be producing at an annualised rate of 245,000 tonnes per year by June 2022, but that target now looks to be a stretch.A “possible future fundraising” was also flagged in the same UK filing. The company has sought to produce sulphate of potash (SOP) at WA’s remote Lake Way by extracting briny water from 85 metres below the salt pan and allowing it to interact with the potassium-rich surface of the lake. Evaporation and further processing are required to create the SOP, which sells at a premium to the mainstream potash product; muriate of potash (MOP).Salt Lake Potash signalled four weeks ago that an important part of its processing infrastructure at Lake Way - the floatation circuit - was in need of further “fine tuning”.
The spectre of another equity raising will haunt some shareholders, who were tapped for $28 million in June, $8 million in January and $82 million in August 2020.Salt Lake Potash also arranged $US138 million of debt earlier this year.Mr Swiericzuk said in June that Salt Lake Potash had tapped shareholders for funds more frequently than he had hoped as the company set about building the Lake Way project.Mr Swiericzuk said he would have preferred to rely more on debt, but with in SOP a largely unknown commodity in Australia, lenders often wanted matching equity contributions before agreeing to offer debt.Salt Lake Potash has been at the vanguard of a new Australian SOP industry, with other ASX listed companies like Kalium Lakes, Australian Potash, BCI Minerals and Agrimin also developing SOP projects in WA.
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