What I cannot understand is that the delays in commissioning the...

What I cannot understand is that the delays in commissioning the plant seem to have cropped up very late in the process and were to do with the actual plant not the evaporation ponds but now we are being told that it will take a further six months or so for the ponds to be producing sufficient material for the plant to be operating at nameplate levels (?).

Okay I accept that the evaporation process that Orocobre is using is measured in months - as an aside the process being touted by the Koreans seems to be counted in days - but surely in that case Orocobre should have been ramping up the evaporation ponds far earlier than it turns out they did. My understanding is the plant being now fully commissioned is ready right now to be operating at full capacity but it will be operating far below capacity for some months whilst the evaporation ponds get up to speed.

So it seems to me that it is not primarily the delays in commissioning the plant that has brought about the liquidity squeeze but rather that the evaporation process was not ramped up earlier enough (surely they could have even stockpiled the raw material so that as soon as the plant was fully commissioned they could have it running at full capacity).

I could have this all wrong of course ...