Mining gold or JV now, page-7

Re Gold,
Looking at the map for where gold was defined and lithium was defined, a significant number of the lithium NSI drill results were targeting gold. The gold was intentionally defined at an unknown but significant exploration cost. I'm not of the view Gold was just meant to make shareholders feel good.

Re lepidolite,
The original JORC noted only a spod concentrate and lower recovery rates. By the Oct 2023 JORC update the recovery rates were a lot higher but some of that recovery is as a lower grade mica (aka lepidolite etc). It may be best to think of the project as a lower (circa 50%) Spodumene concentration operation with a potentially useful lepidolite operation which in combination may have good to very good recovery of the known lithium. Its certainly something to watch as to how robust those recovery estimates are.

I'm not sure quite why its happening, but SMM is quoting stronger 2-2.5% lepidolite prices than it is for the same Spodumene grade. Some lepidolite only concentrates to grades like 4% as a pure sample so a 2.5% lepidolite can have under 40% waste rock while a 2.5% spodumene sample is about 69% waste rock. I'm not sure if this greater removal of waste rock in the sample is enough to cause higher pricing for a product you would expect to have lower pricing.


Current JORC


Original JORC