Ann: Rincon 2,000tpa Li2CO3 Operations Update, page-75

No one is turning a blind eye here, they're just not mistaking this as a negative.

They perhaps shouldn't be stating 5 tonnes of product in the context that it may seem like a direct measurement of progress, because obviously some people are being confused, as you're demonstrating.

Maybe think of it like building a new vehicle. You might not just build the first of its kind and then take it on a 10,000km trip. You'll first test parts of it, take it for a test run, perhaps without even putting the windows etc in. You see that it does run. You spend the next few months installing parts, tweaking settings, taking it for short flights/drives to see how it performs, and all the little test runs clock up a few km here and there, but you're not going to take it far from the workshop until you're confident you have it completed. Until then, it's just little test runs. Once you're sure it's all done you'll take it for a few slightly longer test runs to confirm it's all good, and then, only then, will you put it into commission for normal full time usage.

They just told up they expect it to be ready for nameplate production within a few months. We shouldn't really expect a large volume (anything like a full month's nameplate production) much before it's all done and ready - you don't generally work on machinery while the machinery is running, and until they have it all finished, their job is to get it finished, not have it in operation.

Yes, we all have different expectations. You can want it to be producing a large amount of product, being used as a production facility before it's even finished... I guess you can do that if you want to, but that doesn't mean it makes much sense. For most of us, we're looking at the time when it will be finished and able to be put into full time use, and I'm very happy to see that is not far away at all now. It's much more important to know when we're going to be reliably, consistently pumping out product than however much we happen to produce during the tweaking phase before then. That's mostly just a bit of a happy novelty to get us excited in the mean time, not a direct measure of progress. If they really wanted to they could just turn the thing on and pump out product for a while (like spending time driving a vehicle around to clock up km before the back seats, windows, headlights, etc have been installed) but it's a silly delay in progress before it can be used properly.

Fantastic progress, I'm very happy to see it and the market seems pleased too.