It's easy to become despondent as the share price declines and the unknown of the appeals still hang over us.
Is what we're experiencing out of the ordinary?
Look at Botnia Exploration. Their supreme court appeals process started on January 11th 2021 and ended on October 6th 2021, for a total of 268 days. Botnia's case had many similarities with Talga's stage 1 project (small mine, located on Sami land, near water), but they did not have the extreme tailwinds that we now have (CRMA and a strong pro-mining government).
Perhaps their 268 days puts our 294 days into perspective. We should also take into consideration that one of the lawyers was granted reprieve and allowed to add further information in early November and further games were played regarding power of attorney signatures until the 13th of December. The Supreme court may project a timeline of one to four months, but I think we can now say that's window dressing.
The fact is the court's slow performance has not changed the overall theme. The need to secure future technologies hasn't gone away just because Talga's share price is in a downtrend. Despite the lengthy delay we've experienced, have you seen any other anode competitor within Europe make any ground on Talga at all? I certainly haven't seen this, not even from the synthetic Chinese infiltrators. This is why we see such strong wording around anode production within Europe, see @rhythm34's post about the EU Battery Fund: Here
Outside of our share price and the supreme court, progress and positives are happening, especially if you are investing for the long term. August will see the submission period for strategic projects under the CRMA come to an end (on the 22nd) and we should see the government issue a planning order on the municipality shortly afterwards (the municipality's comment on the case is due at the end of Aug). We've also recently seen the government set up an office to accelerate the green transition, to among other things "ensure that companies, authorities and municipalities reach agreements to expedite the transition". So, all strongly pointing in our direction; just that bureaucracy is once again moving slower than business.
On a company specific level, we can look forward to Talga completing the scoping study for ~425ktpa by Q4, in time to discuss the project's financial needs with the CRMA Board's sub-group on project financing. Funds are already being set up in anticipation of the first strategic projects (France, Germany, Italy all launching funds). See EU Battery Fund above, another example is InfraVia Capital Partners, a private equity fund selected by the French government to launch a new strategy on the critical minerals value chain all across CRMA projects, with a global scope (not restricted to France). €2b across 15 to 20 of the best projects, with aims to fund future expansions too.
Thomas Lagrée from InfraVia on what they're looking at: "There are a lot of good business cases in Europe. The best one is an integrated project, you have the resources, you have the processing, you have the end users. I'm not too concerned on the offtakes themselves, just a legal document, more a question of partnership. Sometimes the paper of the document itself can just be terminated, we've seen that recently. More a question of partnership and traceability. You produce the metals, that then are used by the end users, the end user would be very proud to say that the metals are coming from that mine or that country. The minute you have an EV in Brussels with a big advert on it that the graphite is coming from Sweden, the nickel is coming from Finland, the lithium is coming from Serbia, then the job is done. That's traceability for me. That's more important than the offtake....We're more in favour of traceability from mine to EV rather than just a piece of paper".
More on this in the below video:
Lastly, this occurred on the 10th of July, and holds some weight if you consider the Transatlantic trade agreement and the recent visit Talga received from Under Secretary for Science and Technology at Department of Homeland Security to discuss supply chain security:
"The Select Committee’s Critical Minerals Policy Working Group, led by Rep. Rob Wittman (R-VA) and Rep. Kathy Castor (D-FL) will hold its second meeting, Wednesday, July 10, from 2:00 – 3:30 p.m. to discuss the United States’ heavy reliance on Chinese imports of critical minerals, working with our allies to create alternative supplies of these minerals, and policy solutions to incentivize this shift.
Members will hear from experts:• Mr. Adam Johnson, Managing Partner, Metis Endeavor• Mr. Wade Yeoman, Executive General Manager, Commercial, Jervois• Ms. Mahnaz Khan, Vice President of Policy for Critical Supply Chains, Silverado Policy Accelerator"
TLG Price at posting:
47.0¢ Sentiment: Buy Disclosure: Held
(20min delay)