Relevant Excerpts from Lake Update Webinars, page-67

Continuing on the topic of the full update on the output from the Demo Plant and a full report from Saltworks plus a bit about product purity, recovery rates and what is happening with the Demo Plant from here - "Part C"
Sourced from Update Webinar #2 on 28/9/23
Commentary made by David Dickson - CEO/Managing Director, Jonathan Neilsen - Project Technical Director and Scott Munro - SVP Technology Strategy and Risk

DD: "Jonathan, when you were working with Saltworks obviously they have their scientists and engineers, I mean do they have any commentary around the quality of the Lithium Chloride and the process of how we’re getting such a high lithium purity?

JN: Yes. Certainly, when we started the program with them, they had commented about the purity of the eluate with what came into the site. These folks obviously have a chance to see lots of different brine and different eluates in the field. It's certainly a very positive comment and the work that we've done here was an excellent collaboration between our technical team, the Saltworks technical team and our project partner in Lilac as well. It was a great opportunity for us to bring the teams together and really work towards the end goal of providing the very best product that we can. We've got a flow sheet that is on the slide deck as well for those to see and to follow – that talks a little bit about the work that we've done. We've highlighted in a box here this Saltworks demo specifically because as I mentioned at the lead in that we have also the Kachi DLE demo and we don't want to confuse the two. So, the work that we just talked about is in the blue box at the bottom that goes through the steps post-DLE that walk us through the concentration, purification and production of the carbonate unit. We have essentially (and we get these comments, these questions) we've highlighted some of the recoveries that we are targeting for the DFS and the commercial plants on here and water consumption and they have a chance to talk about that a little bit more.

SM: Well, I think it is important, you know we've seen people ask questions. We built demo plants - we’ve not built the commercial plant. The purpose of the demo plants was to demonstrate the processes that we're going to have in our commercial plant. It doesn't have all the recycle streams, it doesn't have all the recovery streams but we've collected data that supports these recovery figures that we're using as the basis for our design. So, greater than 80% in the DLE part of the plant - the Kachi demo plant that was provided by Lilac. Greater than 97% recovery in the carbonation stream, which means for us overall (greater than) 78%. So, we are confident that the demo plants have given us sufficient data that we can take these into design in the DFS and then convince someone during the due diligence process based on the data that we've got.

JN: Precisely.

SM: I'm just trying to highlight the fact that we have a demonstration plant. We're there to show and collect data. We're not there to produce carbonate. That's not the primary purpose of this plant. It would not be an efficient use of resources for us to keep running this plant forever. Once we've got all the data we need, it's time to shut it down. That's the nature of the beast. That's what happens with Demo Plants.

JN: Yes. The demo plant is simply a system to validate a commercial process. Nothing more than that. It is not a commercial operation. It is not intended to be a commercial operation. All of the units and recycles and things are not in there and, in the end, a particular production volume/production target is not the purpose."