It’s true that olaroz has under delivered in terms of their 13-14k tpa achieved vs the nameplate 17.5k promised.
I agree from the discussions/ explanations by management over the past 5 years that the main reason has been inadequate pond volume leading to lower than expected concentrated brine volumes to pump through the liming and Soda ash plants in addition to some errors in the primary circuit design.
they are very aware of this issue and thus have doubled the capacity of the stage 2 ponds/ liming/ Soda ash/ pumps etc. this means they can improve the brine flows into (and thus output from) the stage 1 plant towards nameplate with a focus on producing battery grade carbonate at 15-17ktpa, then the stage 2 plant will focus on primary (industrial) grade carbonate at a cheaper production cost (due to removing the second purification phase of processing, thus cutting cost by say 500usd/t) which then goes to naraha for conversion to hydroxide.
the problem of course is that the hydroxide premium has disappeared (it was previously 2k/t) so the economics of shifting all the primary grade to naraha and converting to hydroxide don’t appear advantageous presently, but of course this hydroxide premium could re-emerge over time.
ideally AKE would have flexibility to flip between producing mostly or all carbonate, and producing some hydroxide, depending on market conditions. But this is trickier to do than to say…
Either way, I believe olaroz will produce around 38-40ktpa once fully ramped up. 42.5ktpa is optimistic based on their history of under-delivering.
AKE Price at posting:
$10.15 Sentiment: Buy Disclosure: Held
