Ann: Rincon Lithium Project - Progress Update, page-26

I'm surprised you like it. Other than saying they're experimenting with different filter cloths, and by playing around with different pipe sizes and pumps upstream and downstream of the filter (which honestly doesn't sound like the magic bullet fix which is going to take the production rate from three quarters of bugger all to nameplate), it's just a long repeat of what we keep getting told again and again.

How long can they keep saying predevelopment works are progressive for the 10KTPA plant? Surely by now most of what can be done without permits has been done, and if not... how can that make much sense if they were promising we'd have the permits a couple of years ago and the plant should be well progressed by now?

We're continuously told the company is in constant communication with key Salta government officials. Okay, great, but that's exactly the same thing we've been told for years now. It has no meaning or substance. There's literally nothing new on this topic in the 'update'. Hopefully the current holdup is the government being in caretaker mode and once the election is done we'll get the rubber stamp on the form, but the announcement doesn't even say anything like that.

Do words like this actually hold any meaning?
Argosy Managing Director, Jerko Zuvela said “The Company is prioritising works to achieve
continuous production operations at our 2,000tpa lithium carbonate operation.
In addition, significant progress is being made with the pre-development works for the
10,000tpa operation expansion and I look forward to announcing our resource expansion
upgrade soon.
The Company is working toward finalising upcoming significant milestones that will support
Argosy’s ambitions and near-term growth phase to fully develop the Rincon Lithium Project."

I mean, they just slightly reword this message over and over again, it literally doesn't hold any meaning now. It's like a high school kid coming up with words to say about why they still haven't done their homework, every time saying the same things.

Where's all this amazing detail I'm supposed to be excited about? The only actual information worth giving us in the whole announcement is that they're experimenting with piping sizes, pump placement and filter cloths. As someone else said, these issues should have been sorted out by pushing the pilot plant to full capacity (I always wondered why they never ran it to capacity and foolishly thought they presumably knew what they were doing and had learned what they needed from it. Clearly I was wrong and they could have had this issue sorted out years ago but didn't bother, or alternatively it's not possible for them to achieve filtration rates sufficient for the project and we're in the process of realising that now rather than years ago). We don't know if filter cloths, piping sizes and pump position can solve the problem at all. I'm no filtration expert but I can't imagine pipe sizing or pump position having a day and night impact on throughput rates (which we absolutely need), and our hopes and dreams depend on either new filter cloths being radically better, or us finding some solution we haven't even started experimenting with yet.