Ann: Celsius improves recoveries of Cobalt and Copper at Opuwo, page-20

With all the recent attention on our MCB project, it's easy to forget what we have in Opuwo.
In the 1st March 2019 announcement, the company said:
"The Opuwo Project hosts a substantial cobalt resource located in an excellent jurisdiction for mining and the Company remains confident that the project continues to represent a key opportunity when the cobalt price improves and/or with successful optimisation of metallurgical recovery of the value metals from the mineralisation. One or both of these outcomes could significantly change the Board’s view about the Opuwo Project and, should they occur, the Board will reassess the status of the Opuwo Project and accelerate work programs in response. "

At the time, the Cobalt price had tanked from USD100K+ to hover at around the USD30k mark. The company had tried one option for metallurgical recovery, found that it was not satisfactory, and then promptly gave up on trying other options due to the low commodity price. Opuwo was put on ice.

Since then, the following has happened:
- In mid 2021, the company released a new JORC compliant mineral resource estimate for Opuwo that doubled the size of the resource. Total contained Cobalt increased to 259 Mt.
- In 2022, the Cobalt price breached the USD80k mark and kept that level for 3 months, until...
- The inflation / interest rate / global slowdown macro event hit almost all commodities. It is now down at USD50k.
- Now in August 2022, the company appears to have fixed their metallurgy problems with the Opuwo project.

In terms of the commodity price, it is not doing very well but the important point is that it had a strong run-up in price until the macro event stopped it dead in its tracks. This is very different from what happened in 2018-2019, when it was clear that the Cobalt market had its own demons. All other commodities were either booming or were stable in price, but Cobalt was literally shitting the bed. So all things considered, I think we are in a much better position in terms of the commodity price now than in 2018-2019.

In terms of the metallurgy, these new test results represent a clear win for CLA. We are well on our way to "optimisation of the metallurgical recovery of the value metals" as stated in that 1st March 2019 announcement. Assuming that the metallurgy work goes smoothly the rest of the way, surely it would mean that Opuwo is now back on the table, being a viable project with a time-line of major milestones ahead of it. For moving it forward, my opinion is they should skip updating the SS and go straight to PFS.