First of all: I have bought my first Neometals-shares 6-7 weeks ago.
In my opinion Neometals and Mr Reed are farsighted in their thoughts and strategy.
What do you think about the Lithium Hydroxide Project and Neometals strategy: to move from supplying lithium minerals tolithium material solutions?
The DFS for ELi Process is on track for completion by the end of Q2 2016.
What do you think about it - "producing high purity LiOH via the Company's proprietary ELi Process from ore sourced from the Company's jointly owned Mt Marion Lithium deposit."
I think their strategy is good, also the focus on China and the energy storage market (see the story below).
that sounds good to my (german) ears:
Prospect Magazine: Story about Neometals
[...] Regarded by industry watchers as one of the world’s most exciting lithium production
projects, Neometals’ Mt Marion mine will host the largest hard rock lithium concentrator in the world.
Neometals recently sold another 18.1 per cent stake in the Mt Marion project to Jiangxi Ganfeng Lithium for $US27.15 million, bringing China’s leading lithium producer’s stake to 43.1 per cent. The purchase is seen by analysts as a strong endorsement of the project being operated by Perth-listed mining and contracting company Mineral Resources, which owns a 30 per cent interest.
Announcing the sale in February, Neometals’ Managing Director Chris Reed said that it would help fund Neometals’ longer term plan to construct a downstream plant to upgrade Mt Marion concentrate into higher-value lithium compounds for the lithium battery market.
Neometals is developing a patented process to produce high purity battery grade lithium hydroxide. First production at Mt Marion is expected by mid-2016 and the project has been designed to produce more than 280,000 tonnes per annum of chemical grade spodumene concentrate.
Mr Reed told Prospect that many people assumed the future of lithium batteries lay with the new generation of electric vehicles, such as the Tesla model S and X, which had been the initial spark for global lithium demand.
“But as I have said before, the car is the sizzle – the steak is renewable energy storage,” he said.
"At the moment all the demand for lithium is coming from the car batteries particularly in China, but we think the next wave of demand will come from renewable energy storage – like the Tesla Power Wall and the Power Pack- rather than from building the electric cars.”
Mr Reed said he and many others in the industry had thought the take-off point for lithium of about $US250 a kilowatt hour would arrive in 2020 (the price in 2014 was $US800), but Elon Musk’sTesla Motors had already brought out products such as the Power Wall and Power Pack at the $US250 mark.
“To put it into perspective, look at the most successful product lunches of all time,” he said. “It took 12 months in 2007 when Apple released the iPhone to get its first $US1 billion in sales. It took Viagra three financial quarters to get its first billion in sales. It took Tesla two weeks.”
Mr Reed sees China as the main force behind the growth of the world’s lithium industry.
“China’s leading the way and we’re going to feed her,” he said. “Neometals has retained the option to produce downstream ourselves but we can’t do that straight away because we’ve got to finish our definitive feasibility study and then do a pilot study ahead of a final decision in 2017.”
“As the safest jurisdiction for lithium production in the world, WA has a massive part to play in delivering this energy to the world. “We’re proud to be part of the next industrial revolution.”
