PART 14
By this stage we are headed back to the outskirts of ValDor.
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If any mine could be located near a suitable town, thiswould be it.
A hard-core mining town of 33,000.......of gold miningorigins
The name of the town in French actually means Valley ofGold, so its origins go way back.
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We drive past a crane yard, a drill yard, pump supplier,heavy equipment yard, haulage yard, electrical contractors, plumbing contractoretc... etc...
Everything....
Everything you would need to run a mine.
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NAL has its issues...mid-tier, challenging ore body ofdiffering seems and widths, , complex concentration process, etc. Etc..
But one of its strengths is this location near an establishedgood size mining town.
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A great employment base, with an airport and all theinfrastructure of a proper town from schools to roads to supermarket, housing,medical...the lot.
And its not the only town. Lacorne, La Motte, Malartic,Amoss, there's a few around....
It makes it perfect to attract the BEST talent...peoplelike Sylvain....
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So, I see this as one of our strengths and something thatcant be worked on, cant be improved.
The mine is at the resource...wherever it is...under alake...in war torn Africa, in the middle of the Pilbara. Etc...
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We can work on improvements and efficiencies to improverecovery, and grades.... but the others can’t move their mines...not to alocation like this.
Even KP recognizes this as probably the best locatedLithium mine in the world.
And Even Core, who is close to Darwin, is not this welllocated.
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As we approach the railyards Sylvain points out where ourproduct goes.
We look around and in the back behind a few rail cars, wesee the familiar cars from the announcement and the rotainers that are used toload our product on the open cars, for delivery to the Port of Quebec.
L: So why did we change from the Trois Rivieres to thePort of Quebec?
S: The infrastructure is better, better port andlogistically Solurail determined it suited us better.
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No worries, easy explanation and makes sense...that wasanother useless argument on HC for a while.
All it would have taken, was a simple statement whenwe were doing fortnightly ramp updates,
which would have been clear and acceptable to the market.
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We then doubled back through Val'dor and headed to theairport.
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Sylvain was good enough to allows us to contact him if wehad any further questions, so hopefully this direct line of communication withNAL and the guy who has his finger on the pulse remain open and clear. Iftreated with discretion and respect, I don't see why it wouldn't.
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And he is a straight shooter, so if he can answer hewill, if he feels he cant, he wont...simple as that.
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This was Brett's original intention for our trip.
To meet the Quebec team and open a direct line ofcommunication, where we could keep the investor base abreast of the activity.
How ironic, that he is no longer with us, but the tripthat he championed still bore some fruit.
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Back at the airport, we thank Sylvain for his time andhospitality, and say our goodbyes.
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The 3 Amigos head back into the terminal to check intothe flight.
We then sit down at the departures area, where theinevitable discussion and debate of the day’s events start to take hold.
.I think we were all quite impressed by NAL.
The size of the mine and facilities, the activity, thecontinual operation..... and we appreciated the strategies that Sylvain and histeam were putting in place to ensure nameplate is hit as early as possible, toensure NAL's success.
.I remember thinking, how do you put a timeline on nameplate?
There are so many variables, it’s almost a how long is a piece of string moment...or its done when it’s done.....
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But they seem to be confident, and it may very well be in late October.
We are processing in the mid 500's/day regularly and need to get to620, so not that far off.
However I suspect it may still be a little later in2023.
.We were all feeling a lot more confident about the futuredirection of the company.... a lot more than we had felt the day before.
.Back on the Dash8, and heading back to Montreal, wecontinued our conversations on what we had seen over the course of the day,running over the production numbers and discussing the operations of the plant.
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At the other end, we actually flew into another airportnear Montreal, I think Montreal St Hubert, which is a smaller airport and wherethe maintenance facilities are for Air Creebec.
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Johnny, our driver was there to pick us up, and hementioned that he had just dropped off some other lithium guys to the mainairport....
My ears prick up....
.What????
.Who????
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Now, we all know we are on the lookout for a new CEO.
A few names have been thrown around and I have commentedthat Ken Brinsden would be an ideal fit for us.
He got PLS through the dark days of rock bottom lithiumprices and guided them through ramp up.
He then outfoxed James and Alan, and with AustralianSuper backing him, instituted the Altura rug pull.
And he has now hitched his wagon to Patriot and is makingconnections and building a network in Quebec, Canada.
Would Alan and James ever forgive him???Probably not....and in reality would never happen, not without the departure of James and Alan........there's just too much bad blood there.
.Johnny- Um, Patri...I think it was the Patriot...
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My heart skips a beat....
(20min delay)