I attended today's meeting. I have been avoiding here for the simple reason there hasn't been much to discuss. When that happens all the dribble starts to flow!
The first part of the meeting was the voting on the resolutions. Results already released.
I'll say this now so you won't have to skim through. Both Chris and Andrew are buying on the market. We now have skin everywhere.
Andrew gave a brief introduction of the board members and the Chris Evans gave a reluctant run down of himself. He has a civil engineering back ground with 13 years in the army. He then worked in London for 2 years before returning to Perth to do 10 years in mining, the last 3 with the little lithium company up north. That took 3 years to go from our current state to exporting product. He was next door to the bigger lithium company up north and they worked closely together, and learned from each others experience. The mines had very different financing arrangements, which Chris has seen up close. This will be valuable knowledge for us going forward. When he was offered the job he couldn't believe his luck. Here he was invited to join one of the best Lithium resources in the world. A big plus was that we have no cut off grade which will allow us to play with our processing to achieve the best suited products. Chris took the trip to Africa to look at things first hand. He did state he was a little concerned as to what he might find. In Capetown for 2 days, had no problem talking with finance people interested to know more. When he arrived in Marli he was relieved to find everything was as stated. The environment permit is apparently sitting on the ministers desk.Apparently the usual process is as a final process, call all the parties to a conference. As this was the first Lithium application there was 2 conferences called. At this time there has been no changes required and there is no perceived reason for it not to be granted. Discussions about the "lost" permits showed that it may have been related to our submission. Processes have been put in place to address that. The loss of these permits do not impact BIRs ability to go mining or processing. Whilst there Chris had 2 meetings with the minister. Meetings were had with the local chiefs who expressed there support and "when are you going to get on with it".
There is a 3rd possible port for consideration. The reason for this is to have possible storage points to help keep the product flowing during the wet season. The need to store away from the mine site to combat the difficulties of transport during the wet. Whilst there, much of the 1000km road trip was covered, the rest of the transportation path will be covered next time.
The board has been in discussion with car manufactures. They are all well down the path to EVs. Most have not factored the battery materials into their plans. Good at making cars, but batteries are new to all of them. They also see that China is trying to take world control of the Lithium market. A lot are now starting to worry about relying on China as the only source of the processed material. What happens if Trump has a brain fade. Supply could be lost over night. My personal take is that BIR is in the box seat for a play from a non chinese player, as more countries see this as a large risk to countries economy. Energy storage is becoming as big as EVs.
I walked away feeling very confident that we are definitely on the way and we are being lead by a dynamic, component and eager board. AS they are just coming up to speed, the AGM may be able to give a better update on how we are traveling. SP is not going to go ballistic in the short term, I expect it will ebb and flow, but hopefully with an upward trend. It is going to take time and we will have to be patient. Remember the pantene add.
BGS Price at posting:
16.0¢ Sentiment: Buy Disclosure: Held
(20min delay)