I think there is definitely some uncertainty in lithium markets...

I think there is definitely some uncertainty in lithium markets mate, but only in the short term - the greater the investment required to get started, the greater the uncertainty. Lithium is hardly WES's main game as well, so they can afford to wait. It seems that WES did not release the DFS from Mount Holland, but said they were going to look at opportunities to reduce OPEX and CAPEX costs - that tells us a lot about what the DFS must have said. To me it seems clear that the DFS was not positive, or if it was, not by much. The PFS highlighted a roughly billion dollar start up cost - now that is a very significant investment to make with current lithium prices and is likely largely the reason that they decided to delay FID. This is not the same issue that CXO has in my view, CXO has a much lower CAPEX and has very low OPEX numbers meaning that we really only need to see the early signs of a recovery, and we could begin construction with a much lower risk profile than organisations that have a much larger CAPEX investment and a much more complex engineering and logistical operating environment.

We just need to conserve cash to avoid dilution and hope that prices improve just enough to get some finance interests involved so that we can get cracking - the risk of finance is one that rests evenly across all explorers/developers at the moment, our issues are not unique but at least we have all approvals in place and the government onside, but I am hoping that because we have a lower CAPEX, we are hopefully a lower risk than other aspiring operations. I have no doubt they will all get funded eventually, but our strength has always been our time to get to market, and the low cost nature of our operations. Of note here, there was an article in the AFR yesterday, about Europe and its desire to ensure that they start to develop their own rare earth supply (of which they consider lithium to be one) - it mentioned the European Raw Materials Alliance - I can only guess this will have links to the European Battery Alliance, of which we are a member - this would appear to be our best chance to get finance in the nearish term.

It is clear we need to look at some of our minerals in the short term to help our SP, but the requirements for lithium long term have not changed. The demand profile is still expected to skyrocket, and when this movement starts (2021-2022), I sincerely hope CXO is in a position to supply it. We would be kidding ourselves if we thought we will turn the plant on and get to 100% efficiency straight away, it will take time, and we should keep this in. Supplying the market with a sub standard product (no matter the price) will not help our bottom line or our reputation - management needs to ensure that they balance the requirement to produce at maximum price, with the requirement to produce the right product (low impurity, 6% concentrate).

Hopefully we get some more news flow about our other deposits over the next few weeks, and we continue to grind away at the main game. I still haven't sold any but am watching managements moves closely. GLTA.