Okay for the sake of argument or clarification (assuming...

Okay for the sake of argument or clarification (assuming shareholders do approve this and it gets done) and assuing the Japanese and Europeans want some offtake for themselves.

The amount of offake (or even just the amount of spudmene concentrate pre-sold or not) that can go out depends on what the transport infrastructure can support.

If an existing offtake agreement has to be honored first all (to keep faith with that agreement) then all subsequent deals have to be secondary users of the transport infrastructure (which will probably have to be developed and considerably developed - roads made wider bridges or barges or rail lines seriously upgraded - I can't see how AVZ can offer guarantee that with sufficient confidence to the Japanese or Europeans if they are having to come to the party as the second guests.

Until the DFS was done, so long as there was not a blocking stake that prevented AVZ from being effectively taken over via scheme of arrangement there was always the chance (however slim) that the whole lot could have gone to a single party in an auction style who offers the most gets the lot transaction. This deal seems to take that away substantially and well before the DFS and detailed transport solutions that a DFS needs have been able to be presented.

So now I guess I'm asking you, assuming this deal holds and assuming they've offtake obligations with Tianyi Lithium how does a future AVZ Chairman or CEO get transport upgrades sufficient for the extra outgoing spodumene financed? Seems like the hard part of appealing to the Japanese or Europeans (or Americans) or to anyone that comes second after an offtake agreement is that there needs to be a way to finance transport infrastructure upgrades from somewhere and I don't see how that gets done.

To me it seemed to be a sounder strategy would have been to simply complete the DFS first and to have transport solutions of various scale built into that DFS (with no offtake commitments) such that the transport infrastructure capital spend was something a potential acquirer could have considered as part of the total cost of purchase.

@8horse - your excerpt suggest Tianyi Lithium at phase 2 will be 40,000 tons, Deboss seems to have a link of 100,000 tons at phase 2. There a bit of difference.

Scarpa is usually the guy that can convert tons of outgoing spodumene into meaningful numbers like either 40,000 or 100,000 tons of Lithium hydroxide. I vaguely remember 2mtpa mined equalled about 440,000 tons of spod. I remember Nigel worked out numbers of trucks to carry that spod. Increase the outgoing spod to 3mtpa or 5mtpa or 10mtpa (if Japanese and/or Europeans get involved and a radically different transport solution is going to be needed because the trucks won't cope - trains will be needed I suspect and so who is going to fund if they aren't the substantial beneficiary of any funding). ?