Associated News, page-1684

The Oz, transcript from Stockh e ad I believe.

Market Insights: Queensland Pacific Metals (ASX:QPM) from * on Vimeo.
The largest company on our list by market cap, Queensland Pacific Metals is the proud owner of the TECH project, a two stage battery metals project that once fully operational will produce 32,800t of nickel in sulphate, 3580t of cobalt in sulphate, 1.245Mt of hematite iron ore and 4000t of high purity alumina a year over a three decade mine life.It has some of the world’s biggest OEMs on board, all of whom are looking to the project as a key source of supply for metals needed to fulfil their electric vehicle and battery production commitments.“Most battery metal companies end up having one major strategic partner. Well, we’ve got three on our register, we’ve got General Motors, LG Energy Solutions, and POSCO,” general manager of corporate development John Khoo said.“LG and POSCO did an offtake investment transaction with us which resulted in a $20 million investment. and about eight months ago, General Motors came on board with a $100 million dollar equity investment and life of project offtake.“To put it into perspective, we were the very first nickel investment for both LG energy solutions and General Motors and I can let you know that they’ve obviously run the ruler on many nickel projects around the world. So we were very, very pleased that we were first cab off the rank.”QPM also has huge support for debt finance for the TECH project, with up to $1.5 billion of conditional debt secured from bodies including the Northern Australia Infrastructure Facility, Export Finance Australia and Export Development Canada, while the Queensland government has also thrown its weight behind the proposed processing facility.“We are a ‘project of state significance’, but we are also the first company in Queensland to be awarded what’s called significant investment project status and just last week we were all in Korea with Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk and the resources minister and all their staff having a critical meeting with our three partners,” Khoo noted.QPM plans to support the cost structure of the TECH project with its own gas supply from the recently acquired producing Moranbah project, a coal mine waste gas project with 240PJ of reserves which is forecast to generate earnings rising to $14.6 million by the December quarter of 2024.“The next six months is where we bring it all home together and we make the Tech Project a reality and integrate the gas project,” Khoo said.