Having had an interest in critical minerals for some time, every now & then I'd open a spreadsheet I had started to collate all of the Graphite, Nickel, Copper & Rare Earth project developers as I stumbled across them. Eventually I got around to tracking Lithium - last update around 6 months ago had the number at over 200 Lithium projects across the globe - something which happened with Lithium companies, due to anticipated supply deficits extremely well publicized, was that projects with potential road blocks such as environmental constraints encouraged a flood of R&D into DLE extraction technologies.
It took me a long time over a long period to put together what I'd consider a fairly decent list of the above critical mineral project developers, but I've got to say with the advent of AI & that Benchmark info, adding to the above with Fluorite & Lead/Zinc/Silver projects was not as difficult a job as I'd imagine it would be.
This is my Fluorite List
A few points which I found of interest :
• Nokeng, St Lawrence CAPEX estimates track pretty closely at US$125M USD for ROM around the 650-750ktpa mark - St Lawrence is remote
• Some of these deposits are not very large - Ares, Kafersteige, Silius, Loralai for instance.
• Low grades are not the end of project development - if the deposit is large enough, such as Storuman, Delgerkhaan, there is still interest.
• Speewah, with high grade of a decent size plus so much low grade gets it on the list twice for a reason.
• Way back in 1994, the Japan Intenational Co-operation Agency produced a report on the
Wayo Fluorite project above (low grade)
• As far as accuracy of the data above - All the blue underlined numbers are hyperlinks (in my workbook) to raw data sources.
Unlike Lithium where the supply deficit encouraged 200 plus contenders including start ups to enter the space, Fluorite projects are few and far between - this may change, however from this research coupled with the fast approaching PFS & agreement with Sumitomo, the Speewah project fundamentals look extremely promising.
This is my Lead, Zinc, Silver list
Yeah I spent a bit more time on this one.
• Taking a conservative 10 years to develop a new Pb/Zn/Ag mine the following will be closing by 2030/31 - Perilya, Cannington, Rasp, Lady Loretta, Rosebery - this presents an interesting challenge for Australian operators Glencore, South32 & CBH as on the flip side of this in terms of new Australian deposits, the highest grade would be Abra at 7.5% but low grade Silver. A far cry from any of the currently operating deposits at combined Pb/Zn concentrate above 12% with deposits like Lady Loretta up in the 20% range for concentrate.
• South 32 Hermosa/Taylor deposit is around the 7-8.5% concentrate mark - this project is being constructed now & is planned to be operating until 2058.
• Quite a number of these projects are advanced to the point of DFS which includes Arctic project at almost US$1.3B, Corani at US$600M.
• Pine Point - an interesting development is that this project is funded through to FID to the tune of
C$100M p32.
• San Cristobal was part owned by
Sumitomo who divested in 2023 - the deposit still has 7 years life but is lower grade than peers.
AI was immensely helpful creating the basic skeleton of the lists above. However I hit a wall trying to get it to break down the information showing soil samples & rock chips. That wall was not that ChatGPT couldn't provide any meaningful analysis, but rather it didn't have access to enough data to make any sort of meaningful conclusions. I can remember listening to a pod cast with the founder of Kobold Metals where he explained how AI is used by Kobold to find the best targets - apart from bringing together physicists, geologists with computer programmers, it was vast quantities of mining data which has been collated in order to look for patterns - geochemical signatures for instance
- what does the site geochemistry look like where economical deposits have been found - is there a signature?
Certainly this is a simplification of just one geo data point, however collating the data points from all of the tools which Geologists have available looking for patterns would, in the past, been extremely time consuming, if not expensive to reach any meaningful conclusions.
It is this where I think AI with enough different types of data from existing known deposits will certainly help in honing in when bouncing it off new data from exploration.
Where does this leave me after the weekend - I'd suggest a shift in the direction of seeing that the demand for advanced Fluorite resources is real & within 10 years high grade Pb/Zn/Ag deposits - those not only in production but even project developments will be a rarity.
Supporting with data the quiet (lol) confidence I have in TIVAN & the team was a few hours well spent & it also means I can shift my focus elsewhere.
