Ann: Van Uden Gold Project MRE Conversion (Amended), page-26

Re Lithium - Care to entertain us with sources because there are IMO some really odd statements being made there. I presume you haven't found the recent Rock Stock video where they talk with Ken Hoffman of McKinsey. It is correct that CATL has developed a much better Sodium-Ion battery than the rest of the sodium-ion product out there. It was stated as almost as good as LFP but the price point was curiously not stated and just how much it was behind wasn't either. There are however developments that are improving LFP density by 20-30% so the improved LFP to Sodium-ion difference remains large. The cycle life is also something LFP win's vs Sodium-ion. The video also noted that to get Sodium-ion performing well required adding some expensive elements like tin (at $32k/t) so you avoid lithium at $10k/t and add some other $32k/t metal!!

While there will be new developments and new battery mixes, what won't change is the periodic table or lithium's electrical properties. There is a reason its been the go-to component for the electrical charge moving between the cathode and anode.

Its hard to know exactly what's happening in Africa, its a vast place but the issues with AVZ's ownership, Mali changing its ownership take, Ghana with permitting, Zimbabwe with exporting unprocessed ore mean it is very high risk to build a billion dollar carbonate/hydroxide plant and have those supply source risks as part of the supply chain. While it could happen, I don't see Africa becoming a dominant supplier. While you might take the risk with Africa being part of your supply chain, you would be nuts to have them be 100%. These converters need WA ore and its more reliable supply chain.

The huge American resources are clay's, frequently with low to super-low grades. FBM sold one of those clay lithium assets on 4 Nov 2024. They got $4m for an 80% stake in the project. The project was 1,495kt @ 783ppm Li for 6,224kt LCE. The market was viewing the project as not even being worth $1/t of contained LCE. Why? Because this stuff is super-low grade and hard to process. Multiply the 783ppm Li by 2.153 and it was 0.17% Li₂O. The deposit is sitting at around 3x below common spodumene cut-off grades. They were guessing the project was economic with a 90% recovery rate (cough cough) and carbonate at US$20,000/t. The capex to get Tacker Pass clay project into production is something like US$2.9b and something like 15 years of permitting. On that timeline, US ore is a 2040's threat. From Thacker pass and that capital cost they get output volumes not even double what Core Lithium is proposing on restart. Its not quite the same, but its akin to fearing the price of gold will fall because there's a few parts per trillion gold in seawater and there's a massive volume of seawater.

TG6 is sensibly hanging onto the lithium because in the current market nobody's paying a good price for lithium deposits. They recognise the currently stuffed market won't last forever. To put it into context, when lithium was near its peak, the 1.5% Li₂O ore in Burmeister was akin to 20g/t gold deposit at the prices that existed then for gold (around half the price of gold now). That's why the market went nuts for Lithium. The market may not return to those prices but it doesn't need to lithium to start to look attractive again.

• 100t of 20g/t ore would provide 2,000g contained gold. With a 90% recovery rate that's 57.9oz. Allow $100/t mining, transport and processing and A$2,600/t its A$140k
• Core sold 15kt of 1.4% DSO (6.3mm crush) at US$951/t on the 3rd of October 2022. Burmeister has grades higher than that between the original 6 holes drilled. 100t * 951/.67 = A$142k.