Allkem General Discussion, page-1753

"I am wondering when Toyota will finally pull their finger out and off-take everything we will produce".

I think it was touched on recently on one of the AKE threads but the old chairman of Orocobre, James Calaway, has stolen a march on Allkem with the outfit he left Orocobre for, Ioneer. JC is executive chairman of Ioneer which has lithium resources in Nevada due to come into production in 2025. Ioneer is a $1.5 b market cap ASX and NASDAQ listed operator and has recently signed up bankable offtakes with Ford and now the Toyota Panasonic jv. (Prime Planet). The deal with PP is for 4kt pa of lithium carbonate for 5 years (which is 19% of expected production).

So a couple of left field options:

1. Once / if James Bay gets all the regulatory ticks needed PP signs a bankable offtake agreement with Allkem. I am sure I read somewhere that PP has recently announced they are to build a gigafactory in the US but Dr Google is being cantankerous this morning. I've seen it claimed that these days it is possible to knock up a gigafactory in a couple of years and there are already plans afoot to build at least one lithium carbonate plant in southern Quebec or maybe Toyota Tsusho will step in. James Bay is supposed to go into production in 2024 whereas Ioneer is due in 2025.
2. Maybe Allkem could hook up once again with James Calaway by Allkem buying Ioneer. Not only would the deal give Allkem a presence in a major lithium province, Nevada, a proximity to major peers and one of the biggest EV markets in the world, diversity in exposure to a different process - Ioneer is not using ponds but instead sulphuric acid leaching, the opportunity to hook up again with JC (the bloke clearly is the goods in terms of developing lithium and boron companies), and even perhaps a backdoor listing onto the NASDAQ. Maybe any deal might value Ioneer at or above A$2b but not only does Allkem currently own a couple of money printing machines in Mt Cattlin and Olaroz 1 but I would think it would be a relatively easy sell to INR shareholders that if they accept AKE scrip they will be joining a much more powerful unit in AKE+INR. I remember when Northern Star merged with Saracen neither set of shareholders were given a premium so 40% premiums are not always necessary to seal the deal. This idea is not totally random as there are already linkages between Allkem and Ioneer both through JC and through Toyota being willing to work with both of them.