Allkem General Discussion, page-4064

Yeah Stephan, I did read your on-point write-up of Martin's ASX presentation from last week, I was more referring to the youtube link which I think just came out yesterday.

I disagree with you about there being few synergies between neighbouring lithium hardrock mines. Sayona and Peidmont are starting up the NAL lithium mining operation in southern Quebec which has already sent two companies to the wall, partly due to bad timing but also partly due to those operators not managing what apparently is a difficult ore body, too much iron is one issue. Also Mt Cattlin ran into a bad patch towards the end of last year apparently due to poor mine design. I'm not a mining person but there are enough of them on hc for me to know that digging a hole is not as simple as it appears. I imagine there would be similar issues in processing the ore. Martin has said a number of times that having people with practical experience at Mt Cattlin has been a real help in developing James Bay. Worth remembering that there are still very few lithium mines in the world - maybe a handful in WA which produces more than half of the world's lithium supply - and so people with expertise and experience in this line of work would still be as rare as hen's teeth.

There will of course there be tangible synergies in sending the concentrate from the two mines to the one mid-stream processing facility in southern Quebec. But Livent knows nothing about hardrock lithium mining and I think it is in ignorance that Pall Graves is dismissive of the synergies between the two mines.

And while I think of it Howard Klein said that one of the selling points of the merger is that both Allkem and Livent have majority holdings in all of their projects. That of course is not correct as Livent only owns 50% of the company that owns Whabouchi (Nemaska), with a business unit of the Quebec government owning the other half. Livent will have to navigate fund raising for and management of a major mining venture with a bunch of bureaucrats (even worse, with a bunch of French bureaucrats). Maybe the government business unit will allow its ownership share to be diluted in lieu of contributing capex to the project and remain silent partners but at this point in time Livent is in bed with a government agency.