Hi
@sentinel1221I don't see any
major, or even minor risks for the rest of the project.
I know you are talking about the the construction and ramp-up risk but I will answer by including all the risks. (Btw, I have a risk management education and experience. I can recognise low and high probability with low and high impacts, known risk and unknown risks).
- Financial Risk: Nothing... 25% deficit for CAPEX will be closed easily.
- Commodity Risk: Nothing... Lithium is in very high demand and will remain so in next 10 years at least.
- Marketing & Sales Risk: Nothing... 90% of the production capacity for the next 5 years is already sold out.
- Production risk: Nothing on open pit section as our Cathleen's Corner open pit is quite shallow. Our underground mining section has actually lower risk than deep open pit mining (not ours) as pit might collapse due to unstable rock faces or explosive usage. The geology in our area is very suitable for U/G mining, no major and even minor fault is the area, and also the spod rocks are very hard and suitable for U/G mining.
- Construction and ramp up risks: Not anything major can happen. If anything happens it will be fixed promptly and easily.
Yes almost every project in construction and ramp up stage has issues and bugs to be ironed out but the impact and probability of the risk is the important things here.
Yes this is a monster of a project but the good thing which reduces the risk very much is that the project area is very large and and all facilities and machinery are spreading out on on this area. (See the images below)
It's not a compact facility, and it doesn't have a strategic construction and machinery point which could cause the whole project get collapsed. For example if you are building a dam, then yes there are very high impact risks with high probability.
Therefore any problem during construction will be minor in comparison to project size and will be fixed as soon as possible whatever the cost.
I can't say much about the risk in ramp up process, it's a business for process managers and engineers. What I know is we have chosen and bought the best and brand new machinery available on the market (From Metso-Outotek which is the best in the world). And we have the the best ore with very low impurities on the ground after Greenbushes.
It's not going to be a big problem I think. However if anything happens we will have a lot of time to fix it because I believe our project is
at least 2, maybe 3 months ahead of the schedule. I think we will start production in April 2024 at latest if we keep going at this pace.
We will have the best and most modern lithium mine in the world.
Touching wood btw.
I love LTR.
I'm proud of being a part of it.
(20min delay)