Talga's AAM pilot plant cost anywhere up to $22m (they say it was delivered on budget but exact final costs unknown).
It took about 12 months from raising funds, early procurement items through construction to full commissioning, ready to start producing material for qualification by customers.
This Tesla deal requires MNS to achieve that by 31 March 2024 (13 months). So far that is achievable if things get started right away. BUT the next deadline, commence commercial production is 1 Feb 2025, only 10 (TEN!) months after the first delivery of material from the pilot plant.
So assuming the first target is hit, in the following 10 months:
1) Tesla to qualify material from the pilot plant (3 months minimum. Talga talk about this taking 6months+)
2) MNS to build a full commercial facility and start production. This will likely be 30-40X+ the scale of the pilot plant, delivered in a shorter amount of time. For comparison Talga's capex for a similar size anode refinery was US$250m (in 2021, hello inflation). That is a lot of money to spend over an 7-10 month construction program. Could Magnis start building the plant earlier? Is anyone going to commit to funding $US200-300m+ capex on a commercial anode plant prior to successful qualification from a pilot plant? Who would take that risk?
How is this remotely possible? Lots more questions but will leave it there. This is even ignoring where the feedstock is coming from, assuming a backup source is available so no relying on Nachu being developed concurrently to this timeline.
(20min delay)