General Discussion AGY, page-14180

Hi HOOPZ,
I notice that someone posted some rough analysis of yours recently, showing a derived “reserve” of 74kt LCE iirc, for AGY.
You seem to have derived this from the AGY PEA resource of 245kt LCE, using a “30% conversion rate”, which iirc you said was “generous”.

afaik there is no JORC-specific process for reporting brine resources. Some companies refer to Canadian codes iirc.
Anyway, my point is this:
Resources ain’t resources in the brine world.
If you read the AGY PEA, you will note a table that show the insitu brine volume.
This insitu brine volume totals 632 billion litres.
The drainable brine volume is also specified.
This totals 144 billion litres.
144 BL x 325mg/L (Li)
= 46,800 tonnes Li
= circa 245kt LCE
(Note some rounding errors but close enough)
AGY estimated 95% abstraction of drainable brine, and incorporated a 70% overall process recovery factor iirc:
245kt LCE x 0.95 x 0.7
= circa 165kt LCE
THAT is effectively how they estimated that the intially-defined resource should provide for about 10ktpa production for 16.5 years.

The issue is that you took the 245kt LCE and treated it like “other brine resources” are reported (?) and considered that perhaps only 30% of it could actually be realised as product.
This is a flawed approach.
The insitu brine volume holds much more than 245kt LCE (or 47kt Li).
In simplified terms, this may be (using the insitu and drainable brine volume numbers from above):
632 / 144 x 245kt LCE
= 1,075kt LCE

Now, if we take your “generous” 30% figure, and apply it to that circa 1Mt LCE (insitu brine), then we end up with around 300kt LCE.
This does indeed come close to the 245kt LCE in the drainable brine that the company estimated.
Perhaps a “less-generous” “conversion rate” number of 25% is more suitable?

So, it would appear to me that the lack of specific JORC guidelines around brine resources may be causing some confusion/issues when it comes to comparing different projects.
The fact that Pablo Alluralde has spent many years in a commercial Li brine operation provides me with significant confidence and comfort that his estimates - wrt what’s in the ground vs what they expect to produce - are very reasonable and indeed do not include a 3x “error” as you indirectly indicated.

Food for thought.
Keen to hear your comments.
(I hold gln too btw)

AGY - it’s a strong buy from me, always has been, and the fact that most don’t understand what AGY actually has is fine by me, as it allowed me to buy up big at low prices. The market will come round eventually…
$$$$$


not advice
Dyor