Here's an unedited summary of the presentation
Foster stockbroking briefingOct 13
- Escrow is water tight, would need a change of control of Leo (not FFX)
can’t sell into a bid, can only sell after a change of control has occured
- Final stages of preferred candidates & getting a new Chairman
- Leo has secure tenure (re AVZ), recently tested with the transfer to Leo from FFX, 30 year mining concession in place.
- Mali Govt 1st 10% about to be initiated
- There are examples of where the Govt has not taken it up, but expect they will exercise that right, will take quite a period of time
- Expect Goulamina to be a major player just as BHP/RIO are in IO, because of the size & grade of our deposit
- NE DomainDrilling stopped at 150m in ore, instructed drillers to keep going till out of the pegmatite, some holes have gone to 350m
expect results to the mkt in the next few months
- Also drilling between the Northern & Danaya domains, to see if we can join up the pits
- We’ll come out with assay results in next few weeks, take a little longer to restate resource & reserve, probably Danaya domain toward EOY, NE Domain late Q1.
- Resource at zero cutoff, will mine everything, because pegmatite seems are quite large & extensive & the waste rock is black, the ore is white, grades not too variable,
so will take all the white pegmatite & put it thru the plant.
- Whethered top ore we’ll put it aside & not put thru the plant
- Stage 1 schedule, earth works this yr, next yr all construction, Ramp up H1 2024, H2 pushing up to nameplate. Will have product coming out mid year, Need to commission logistics chain as well as the plant
- Stage 2 a year lag on stage 1, so incorporate stage 1 learnings. Will be doing work on stage 2 outline engineering work this yr, come out with a conceptual look at it in the next few months
- Crushing, Milling, Magnetic separation, whole of ore flotation (so no DMS)
- Infrastructure mostly being built at stage 2 capacity
- Design at 33%, drafting at 28%, procurement 70% of tenders in the market, 10% let, on track budget + schedule
- Earth works contractor will mobilise to site this month, & Lyco key management.
- Logistics doing a lot of work, multiple routes, need 250 trucks, one logistics company (cote D’Ivoire) has 1000 trucks already gps onboard etc, so see no problem, will go to tender
- Close to securing port access with storeage,
- Ganfeng have half the offtake for stage 2, their converter commenced constuction 4 months ago, ready early 2024, will be their 5th of 6th converter, so will not have the problems some of the Aust ones had.
- Goulamina will supply about a sixth of their feedstock
- Will reveal to the market more on logistics probably in the next month, or 2 months
- Discussions on downstream are advancing,
- Drilling results in next few months, so a fair bit of news flow in coming months.
- I think FFXhave an impact on us until they re trade & are up & about again.
- On funding side, if we need to, can extend the loan, can do a prepayment on the spodumene, or could do what Core have done & do 1 or 2 shipments of DSO.
Qs
- Re DSO, would do it more for testing of the logistics, would need the crushing circuit operational, trucking logistics, mining contractor to prestrip in a small area.
- DSO is not something we’d do on a large scale, Ganfeng are fine with it.
- Lots of suppliers of crushing units, flotation & magnetic separators are more niche, Ball mill was the big one with long lead.
- Ganfeng have 50% LOM offtake for everything, now the other 50% of stage 1
- Extra 20-30 trucks on route would not be noticed on the very busy bitumised route. ECOWAS agreements means free trade across the borders
- Take into account feedback from FFX re mining contracts, 8 companies tendered for the business, well advanced in the selection, DD covers looking at their other projects.
(20min delay)