Associated News, page-2315

Totally understand your frustrations with the sector, QPM team and political policy.
There's two or more sides to any story, and I guess that's where my view on the TECH project is still glass half full, albeit less starry-eyed nowadays.

* GM - yes, $100M is a production tweak or alternate part supplier change. And small change to keep supporting QPM and maintain that ESG mineral supply lustre.
* 'Pending' is not unique to this stock. Study overruns, resource upgrade delays, finance cycle strangulation, capex blowouts etc. are endemic across the battery metals sector. We're at the tying everything together stage pre-FID, so yes, a lot of things are pending internally, yet also externally in the government support area.
* Fed Policy - I agree saying no to the Stage 3 tax cuts would be a greater benefit to the country. The PM and Treasurer seem firm on this though, and also seem firmly behind moving Australia away from dig and ship and enjoy more of the upstream benefits of minerals processing (revenue, skills, associated industries etc). Whether we get to local battery manufacturing is another (North QLD) story > see link in point below
* QLD policy - Sure the Olympics are a big focus with Brisbane receiving the lions share. Townsville's stadium is pencilled in as a football preliminary venue. More relevant is Townsville definitely being a magnet for large state government investment: https://www.statedevelopment.qld.gov.au/news/mission-2050-how-townsville-is-becoming-a-global-renewable-energy-hub
* Workers - Clive's crew could be looking for work, as Yabulu 2.0 seems unlikely. IMO there'd also be plenty of southern construction and refinery folk sick of the cold and big city real estate prices ready to make a sea change to T-ville. Much of the large projects are infrastructure-related, rather than building LNG refineries one after the other. Noting QPM have already engaged Monadelphous to look at streamlining construction. They have refinery runs on the board and are well connected to the required workforce. In any case, our German and Canadian suppliers will likely build key parts of their plant offshore and ship it in modules here for final assembly, just like an auto factory.

Not saying there are hurdles and headwinds, of course our road is hard, like any prospective junior progressing from a hoping to be to an actual producer.

QPM's preso's have been titled 'Re-Energising Australia with Critical Battery Metals Production' for a while now.
Trusting 2024 sees SG and team with re-invigorated comms, perspective and purpose.
The Benchmark World Tour stop in Melbourne on Wed 31 Jan looks like our first look at SG's messaging and progress in person, with our Dec quarterly due by then also.

@Stratopher:
* Batteries: more recent and great news on Panasonic 2170 cells which are high nickel content, with what looks like improvement to the anode through the use of silicon:https://electrek.co/2024/01/15/panasonic-to-soon-make-new-batteries-for-tesla-could-reduce-ev-prices-report/

* NC nickel: With Glencore's funding of the Koniambo operation ending at the end of February, and restructuring from the French Government review pending, we should get some clarity soon!
Koniambo pumps out a lot of ore.
Let's see whether NC continues to assist French nickel and gigafactory critical raw materials independence goals, and play an important role in non-Chinese controlled nickel supply...