Ann: Ewoyaa Definitive Feasibility Study, page-15

Ewoyaa is still perhaps 12 months ahead of the current Tennessee schedule but a small amount of that will need to be used in the logistics of processing and transporting product to USA. Its not yet problematic and some of the SYA material could also be used in commissioning processes at Tennessee. The Tennessee project also has a looming milestone (permitting completed by the end of Q3 2023). Given past progress on USA permitting, this can only be counted on when actually achieved. There would appear a significant chance of missing this timeline and that would shunt all the Tennessee timeline out and increase the gap between when Ewoyaa expects to be able to supply material to PLL and when Tennessee needs it.

Within the $3,500m life of mine EBITDA there is approx. $640m of secondary product revenue net of secondary product selling costs and royalties. From an Atlantic viewpoint, this adds to the overall project profitability but it would still be a very good project with life of mine EBITDA of around $2,860m without achieving any revenue from fines. From a Piedmont viewpoint, further processing of this material to circa SC5.5 or SC6.0 would take output volumes well past 400ktpa meaning a single source of supply for Tennessee.

The back-end flotation case
Atlantic have put a 80ktpa at over 5% figure on this but there would appear to be upside if middlings can have ok flotation recovery rates. A lot will depend on how well flotation processes recover lithium from fines and already processed DMS middling rejects. The fines is the easiest to guess. The project notes LoM 4.7Mt of fines (450ktpa @ 1.2%) and I suspect that once generating strong cash flow from DMS sales there may be stockpiling and almost all of these will end up going through a flotation plant. Because there isn't any pre-filtering making the material inherently more difficult to concentrate, good recovery rates should be possible. If a 70% recovery to 5.5% is achievable from this 1.2% grade material, it will become 69ktpa or 723kt over the LoM. If concentrated in this way the revenue at the SC5.5 assumed average price of $1,478/t would become $1.07b LoM revenue. There will be operational costs, but this exceeds the revenue booked in the DFS and sale costs would reduce when shipping a higher grade product. There is also the operational risk that a strong fines market may not exist in all periods when you want it so having Spod derisks that portion of the revenue stream.

Scheduling information for comments above
The schedule for Ewoyaa to the DMS is 453kt in 2025, 2.0Mt in 2026 and 2.7Mt in 2027.


The Tennessee timeline from 21 April 2023 is below. Tennessee doesn't need any of the 2025 production. It needs a small supply during commissioning and depending on the ramp up profile for 2026. The ramp up profile will extend into 2027 and its at best mid-2027 and probably later that input annualised at 196ktpa (sc6 equivalent) is required.