My response is as follows:
1. Dathomir dispute - this was stated recently to have been occurring prior to January 2022, and well before the May 2022 Ann. Refer:
Post #:706863192. Zijin sought to take a stake in the project well before May 2022 and AVZ was aware of it as well.
My point of citing the two above is they are a key to AVZ maintaining a 51% stake in the project after giving a 24% stake to CATH should the CATH agreement ever come to fruition, and I suspect to operational management of the project and access to financial markets for capex funding.
In effect you had two disputes around ownership that potentially would impact project timelines, whether AVZ would remain the predominant shareholder in Dathcom, and AVZ failed to inform the market not until May 2022 on these, and they were aware of those issues before hand but appeared to not treat them serious citing they are spurious in your words (and to be blunt at the back of an Ann on another issue - refer that Ann here
Post #:61188583). Well they may be spurious but timelines have been impacted = material.
We have a difference of opinion on what is material or not material. Those developments are material purely too me on the basis they are central to attaining a ML (which might explain delays there) as well as getting the project of the ground. Financiers and offtakers don't commit until legal ownership of a project is known - a basic point.
Anyway that is my opinion and I guess we can agree to disagree.
Not to mention, that coming into production in 2024/25 would have been a key catalyst to underpinning project viability as well, given where spodumene prices are. With more players entering the market, AVZ's 'early' mover status and the benefits it brings have been adversely impacted by this fiasco, notwithstanding the adverse impact it is having on the people of Manono who need economic development to get out of poverty.
The DRC government are also the key culprits here and they should be embarrassed internationally with this fiasco. They are demonstrating to the world the DRC is and remains corrupt, and that it will provide no guarantees on investments in that country around ownership after resource discovery. Why would small exploration companies want to explore there?
At the end of the day, AVZ has to cut a deal to get this moving IMO orelse this will simply be entangled in legal uncertainty for a long time without development (or minimal development) of the deposit. I wouldn't trust Zijin mining the deposit environmentally responsibly either, if it gets its hands on it either.
All IMO
