To be honest in my view this is a neutral development.It is...

To be honest in my view this is a neutral development.

It is pretty strong endorsement for the technology we own. Which is good in one sense, as it points toward technology risk being pretty much irrelevant now. However we still don't have a project in development for a reason, so tech risk mitigation merely points to political, commercial/management and market risk being the unmitigated risks, which is nice to know, but this endorsement does nothing to help us on that front.

We did do a licencing deal for a flat sum to pay down a debt on a convertible note as memory serves, at a time when the lithium market and our own prospects seemed rosier. That licencing deal does not mean we no longer have competitive advantage. The licence is limited to Cornish Lithium (potentially limited to this one project, I can't recall?) and they can't, by themselves fill the whole market for mica-produced lithium once it recovers.

In theory we ought to be able to licence the technology to others for some cash to stay alive, but no discussion on that front has been forthcoming for a while, probably because the market is depressed and the simple dig up rocks approach is lowest risk for producers at present.