The strategy most hard rock operations have adopted is to seek...

The strategy most hard rock operations have adopted is to seek to produce a concentrate and ship that concentrate to China. China's distinctly cheaper cost to build and operate Hydroxide/carbonate plants then completes the conversion to battery plant ready lithium. That strategy might have worked with the Seymour deposit but wouldn't have provided Ontario a source of lithium for the battery plants and EV factories that are in a mixture of planning and construction. It would have provided China a 2nd source of lithium from the North America's (and also been exposed to the high transportation logistics cost that SYA's NAL operation has noted).

The strategy GT1 are trying to implement is to give Ontario a source of battery input process ready lithium. Trying to implement this broader strategy has chewed through capital far more quickly than would have occurred under the standard Junior model of trying to identify a project and get it into production. So far GT1 appears to have received a lot of hot air, but not many dollars from the Ontario government. Aside from the huge issue of finance, they are getting close to having a FID ready project in Seymour. They have the resource, mining licence, mine design, met test work and are working on the remaining permits. In this respect they are years ahead of other projects still going through baseline studies.

As they acquired a deposit that had the near surface area drilled out, GT1 have not been releasing the high grade at surface intercepts that exist for Seymour. On GT1 released results it appears a deep deposit, not one that is so close to the surface they have taken bulk samples for met test work.

Within Seymour they failed to progress UG development scoping work in a timely manner meaning they can't report the depth mineralisation that would be mined UG in the same way Australian's can under their slightly different version of JORC code. Presumably under NDA's they can share the known resource but to the ASX audience its a smaller number. They tried to get around the Canadian code by using high pit envelopes but in doing so failed to show the low-cost structure for the first few years as they mine near and at surface high grade Seymour ore. They may have also scared away many potential investors as they were quickly labelled high cost due to the pit envelope used. Without more resource being found or bought, Seymour is unable to be at a longer mine life like 15 or 20 years but they do have the first ~7 years.

Some Australian DMS only deposits have or are going to go into C&M reducing confidence in potentially either smaller or DMS only deposits.

The structure of lithium deposits means many operations including the biggest names around are exploring UG potential but until LTR starts reporting financials that make sense, confidence in lithium going well through UG mining will be limited.

GT1 want a larger lithium source at the Seymour hub and may find it at Junior. This update indicates that there's patchy mineralisation at Junior within the first few holes. That patchy mineralisation is however over a wide area and near surface so it has good economics.

The three obvious circuit breakers are a large, high grade intercept near Seymour, some sort of major financial commitment from someone like the Ontario government or a recovery in the lithium price and with that improved sentiment. One of these or a wild-card is needed.