Has to be the last pump before a CR... Cash less Acc Payable Dec 31 leaves approx $2.5M net liquidity and a quarterly spend running at $2.5M. Don;t want to be running end March with less cash than invoices due in April in addition to the burn rate treadmill.
There is so much in this ESG green carbon sales pitch I disagree with, including the assumption all Ti-slag is and will continue to reflect Sth African coal fired electricity and transport to Europe, that SVM will be using green hydro when the country has many blackouts and not enough electricity for one of the most electricity deficient countries on the planet (ie SVM will be using their own power source to avoid blackouts and depriving the poor locals) but mostly that Ti-Slag production is CO2 greedy and waste forming.
Ti-Slag is actually the 'waste' bi-product of pig iron production and how the whole idea first came about. Ti does not mixed with iron in the steel smelting process and floats to the top with other impurities immiscible with the melted iron and is essentially the 'slag' residue left over after the liquid iron is decanted out of the smelter. Pig-iron is not just highly valuable in it's own right, it is an excellent feed for environmentally friendly Electric Arc Furnaces (EAF) which recycle steel (potentially with green electricity in the future as opposed to iron-ore + coal steel smelters). Looked at this way, the pig-iron should attract the CO2 penalty and the Ti-Slag is a CO2-free bi-product... Say we just split and share the CO2 between two valuable products instead of foisting it all upon Ti-Slag as nasty CO2 greedy "waste".
Further, a couple of tonnes CO2 in the scheme of global CO2 production and forest destruction etc, etc, etc is immaterial for the tiny TiO2 pigment industry. By all means, add a tonne of carbon credit offset cost to the Ti-Slag feed which is already the future for how economics determines what industries change to more expensive alternative productions and what ones don;t (inflation is bad enough without trying going zero carbon everything and send us back to the stone age standard of living).
Not just economic rationalism, there is not enough rutile to cover 20% of Chloride route TiO2 production, 10% of global if dirty sulphate route producers convert to chloride. Rutile has it's place in welding and Ti-metal production but it is and always will be a sprinkling into the global TiO2 pigment supply which consumes 90% of all TiO2 product. Beware product substitution imo, it's more likely expensive rutile in pigment production gets substituted out for more slag than the other way around SVM is hoping for.
Rant over
(20min delay)