Argentine Brine Comparables, page-29

thank you very much for your criticism. i don't speak for the company, i just provided my thoughts on the possible costs as i used them in my case to evaluate my own investment and my expected return on investment.

i think that ake's announcement showed that many developers live more or less in a dream world. to address the opex costs: the question is at what cost can ake achive battery grade carbonate. if you look at ake's other project (olaroz), in which they have been struggling with a brine for about seven years and have not yet come close to achieving an appropriate ratio of tg to bg to significantly support annual nameplate production estimates. we see the same thing with lac and their project in the same region. 5,000 tons of carbonate will probably be produced here in 2023. in a facility that was originally supposed to produce bg from the first quarter of this year. i think that opex of all other competitors (if you can call them that) only in terms of battery grade are significantly higher than the numbers presented by them in studies.

with gln there is no distinction between battery grade and technical quality. gln will deliver a product at a reduced opex (presumably). i can imagine that some companies around us can use gln's chloride to "improve" their own bad numbers. when i think about it, perhaps they opex for reaching your bg could also be reduced. however, these are only speculations.

regarding the 40% reduction that jp mentioned, all i can say is that all costs will probably have increased. accordingly, the cost advantage will be more aligned with the studies of carbonate operations.

i don't think they will reach the 72% of carbonate price from their study. i'm currently assuming a purchase price of around 15,000 usd per t (LCE!!). i increased the opex by 5% in my calculations. with these two numbers i get a margin of 69%, which is still extremely satisfactory. with increase in production volume, opex should further reduce.

i know it's a very long way to even talk about it. i also criticize the management for not directly announcing 20,000 tpa as stage 1. they must also criticized for poor communication (which has recently improved significantly).

sometimes i don't understand why adhering to timelines is always criticized. we all know that these are regularly not adhered to. it's probably often not even management's fault. that's part of the game we play. it absolutely cannot be a valid point.


additional to my previous post: the largest costs in stage 1 capex were evaporation ponds (31,300,000) and ponds reagent plants (27,000,000). starting from 5,400tpa (it's easier to calculate) this would result in 5,796 and 5,000 / t.

for 20,000tpa this gives ponds ~116,000,000 and plant ~100,000,000. i am aware that this calculation will not work. if you apply this to all other positions, you end up with ~440,000,000. minus work already carried out in stage 1, you could end up at 400,000,000 again. just a thought. all figures are in USD.