Look ....I guess nobody is arguing that these sorts of potential ' Funding and Support ' coming from deals take a bit of time to iron out . And of course at the same time they can obviously be seen to be helped along by BOTH the side show process in BAPE as well as the ongoing Court appointed administration of NAL
But if we look beyond these ' sideshows ' , we can often find hidden gems of strategies and potential directions which have been communicated along the path of this seemingly dragged out journey , and which have actually come directly from the horse's mouth so to speak.
And if we look into an article put out by S&P Global Intelligence back on 23rd March 2020 and titled as per below , we will find at least a few Gems of statements made by Sayona's MD Brett Lynch
" Sayona Mining positionsitself in EV drive key toQuebec's post-pandemicfuture "
In the article he states that :- " while Western Australia is looking to build itsown EV supply chain hub, Lynch said Quebecsits with Australia in dominating hard-rocklithium deposits globally. "
AND ,
" Lynch believes that Quebec has the edgeas itis "more hands on," driving industrydevelopment "hard and fast,with very clearpolicies of exploiting the maximum value addfrom its unique resource."
However what I find even more interesting is this other statement he makes in this article as follows :-
" Lynch said Sayona wouldneed InvestissementQuébec,the provincialgovernment's investmentarm, plus a globallycapable strategic chemical processingpartnerto jointly developa lithium hydroxidefacility. "
And,
" That opportunity wouldbe facilitated byacquiring North AmericanLithium and its 180,000-tonne-per-yearconcentrator andworkforce,which wouldsave Sayona up to fouryears to build,commission and ramp upits own one. "
And I know we have talked about this before - But what comes to mind straight up is an operations that should be well known to all of us and that is a Company by the name of Glencore .....and it's rather prominent Canadian operations and divisions.
So we should all be aware that Glencore Canada's NorFalco sulphuric acid production operation is LOCATED at Rouyan-Noranda .......less than 100 kilometres to the west of the Authier deposit , and around 150 kms from the NAL operation near La Corne.
And the potential partnering with Glencore Canada doesn't just stop at this obvious Sulphuric Acid accessibility ...because that could all change as someone raised the October announcement and collaboration with ICS ( Integrated Carbon Sequestration ) . However it could also be seen to fit with respects to Quebec's environmental priorities as well. Or at least from the ' Support ' for the project angle anyway.
And the reason for this is that Rouyan-Noranda is also home to their ( Glencore's ) Horne Smelter which is North America's LARGEST processor of electronic scrap containing copper and other precious metals. In fact their Horne smelter is a ' custom ' designed smelter which processes both copper concentrates and precious metals recyclables as its feedstock in producing a 99.1% copper anode. These copper anodes are then shipped to the Canadian Copper refinery in Montreal where they are converted into 99.99% copper cathodes.
So the metals and chemical ' Technology ' is already well established and even perfected by this Anglo- Swiss Behemoth integrated mining and metals producer in Glencore.
On top of all this it is also a well know fact that with all this talk of Tesla , that Tesla who already sources it's Cobalt from Glencore at it's Shanghai Gigafactory was also in ' undisclosed ' talks around the middle of this year with Glencore for additional long term supply of up to 6,000 tonnes of additional cobalt for its other Gigafactory requirements. So the North American relationship between Tesla and Gelencore is already well established in the EV metals space......so why not additional Lithium from a combined Glencore / SYA / NAL consortium.
And I suppose it can't really hurt the overall Industry much when you have Elon Musk surpassing Amazon's Jeff Bezos as the World's richest person only hours ago...........
Irrespective of all this and whether it's Glencore of not , the simple fact is that 9 of the 15 largest Chemical manufacturing companies in the world by sales have manufacturing facilities in Canada's largest chemical manufacturing sector being that of Ontario. A sector that is the 5th largest in North America by employment and 9th largest by shipments , and which ships almost $19 billion in shipments and which 75% is exported. Just in this Ontario sector , it has over 700 chemical manufacturing facilities employing over 29,000 employees.
Ontario is indeed at the centre of Canada's chemical production with virtually 40% of it's entire production. But that still leaves 60% from elsewhere , and Quebec and Glencore out of Rouyan-Noranda are virtually on the Border of Quebec and Ontario and as we have already identified - not all that far away from the Ontario and US EV production facilities at Oakville and Windsor Ontario .... and of course Detroit.
So who knows , maybe we will see the ' Ultimate ' deal pulled off by Lynch because it is becoming clearer and clearer to me that he might actually know what he is doing......
(20min delay)