Ann: Prairie Lithium PFS Confirms Extremely Low Operating Cost, page-25

A decent read, however, this sparks a bit of concern for me. If we’re not producing battery grade chemicals, who is going to step in to help us fund it?

11.3 Discount for Downstream Conversion to Battery Quality Lithium ChemicalsAt this stage in the development of the Prairie Project, Arizona Lithium does not intend to make battery quality lithium chemicals at the well pad. The operating strategy at each well pad facility is to produce the highest quality lithium chemical at the lowest environmental impact and cost. The high quality of the Prairie Project brine, combined with the latest advances in DLE and CFRO technology, results in the production of a near battery quality product; however, additional purification is necessary to achieve the specification required by most cathode and battery manufacturers. As a result of this strategy, a discount to the pricing scenarios described in Figure 21 is required to represent the value that must be added to the well pad lithium product by others further down the supply chain. In this regard, South American advisory firm iLi Markets assisted by Ad-Infinitum, examined the Prairie Project well pad product and provided a formula for determining an appropriate discount. Using a conventional lithium carbonate flowsheet with bicarbonation, ion exchange, and crystallization it was determined that a base conversion charge of $2,606 per tonne LCE was appropriate given the following assumptions: Regional pricing for electricity and reagents The converter is the end-user (no profit margin included for 3rd party converter) No transportation cost included from conversion facility to battery producer Brownfield or existing conversion facilityUsing the Global Lithium conservative price of $21,000 per tonne, the netback price for the lithium product produced at each well pad is $18,394 per tonne.