Ann: First Lithium Chloride produced from Optimisation Plant, page-16

He is probably referring to the following. But i find no flags at all but encouragement as if generic adsorbent gives you a 90% result using the tech, then vulcan's own VULSORB which they have done tweaking for years to suit for vulcan's own berine characteristics can definitely going to give a better efficiency and yield. Its that simple in my opinion. If it's a failure Francis won't talk about commercialising that and may have given that up by now. The reason why they didn't use it on LEOP is unknown but I can only guess that it may be not fully ready yet or they wanted see how this work with generic one for backup usage.

Next steps
The LiCl produced by LEOP represents the first lithium chemicals fully produced from a locally sourced raw material, i.e. extracted and then processed locally, at this plant scale in Europe. During hot commissioning and startup of LEOP, a generic aluminate-based lithium adsorbent was used, that has been used before in Vulcan’s lab and pilot plants. Vulcan’s high-performance aluminate-based lithium adsorbent VULSORB^® will be used for the long-term operation. The next step will be conversion to a battery-grade lithium chemical in Vulcan’s downstream optimisation plant. The LiCl product (40% weight solution) produced from LEOP will be transported to Höchst Industrial Park Frankfurt, where Vulcan is currently completing its CLEOP which will convert the LiCl into battery grade Lithium Hydroxide Monohydrate (LHM).