Ann: THR: Strategic Development Australian Copper Interests, page-16

imo, the appetite for financing junior kaolin hpa projects has been weakening since mid last year.

financiers (banks, investment houses, trading houses) know that there's nothing stopping the major producers from ramping up production of hpa to match or even flood the projected demand. so imo future hpa pricing is in the hands of a few large players who are more interested in competing through maintaining or increasing market share, than generating cash profits, because remember, the hpa units of these major players are small in the grand scheme of their overall business.

unfortunately, the pfs of kaolin hpa juniors is highly sensitive to hpa pricing. imo, it obviously raises questions about the discounted cashflow models being used to assess the economics of these projects.

strategic offtakes is an option, however given the amount of capital required, some sort of 3rd party financing will be required to fund the balance. the hpa supply chain is a fragmented market so unlike the lithium downstream market, there isnt any one hpa end user that has the firepower to fund USD250m.

adn isn't the only junior suffering from this.