Ann: Beyond 10 Million Tonnes, page-63

you know, I've been thinking. One key principle in business is to focus on your strengths and mitigate your weaknesses, and its about time management started doing this!

I have seen a bunch of charts that compare the size of our resource compared to others in the industry, but we are comparing apples with oranges. Whilst I recognise that the sector has largely been kidnapped by the lure of large resources, the funny thing is that the size of the resource (beyond what is commercially viable) actually doesn't matter. We have seen a number of companies in the sector publicise their 30 or 40 year mine life, but mostly, this is irrelevant. What matters right now, is a mine life of 5-10 years. For all we know, lithium may not be a key element required in sustainable energy in 40 years time, but what we do know is that it definitely will be for the next 10. so, what does this mean for management.

Start to focus on your strengths, I am yet to see a chart (published by a company) that highlights the time to mine compared to others (we would be close to the top of the list). I only see ones that compare resource size...it is foolish for us to attempt to compete on resource because we simply do not have it (yet), we are trying to do it though - which is what the announcement today seemed like. We need to compete where our strengths are, highlight our time to market, our grade, low capex, low cost per tonne, and the short payback. These particular aspects of our operation actually make it difficult for even the larger companies to compete against us and make us a very attractive option. If over the next 5 years, we increase our resource to a decent size, then we can start to publicise our resource compared to others, but its wasted effort right now.

We need to sell what we are good at, a well constructed argument will make for a compelling business case - start reshaping the competition to what suites us, not what doesn't.