BAPE updates - we need more experts to work on this!, page-18

Going through this document and will post my thoughts on bits that stand out. There is no way to do it all at once so I will do only one question per post.

So this very first question is concerning a variant of the planned transportation of concentrate, "Plan B" if you will. Here is the full text of the question.

5 D ESCRIPTION OF THEVARIANTS OF IMPLEMENTATION OF THE PROJECT

Transport of concentrate

QC2 - 1

In response to questions QC-9 and QC-10, the initiator presents anassessment of the

rail transport options. In the evaluation presented, thedistances considered

between the project and the ports of Montreal, Contrecoeur andTrois-Rivières seem to have been

underestimated, which can have a double impact (round trip) on thecomparison with

the option of truck transport. The literature reports thatthe competitive distance between

the shipping and receiving locations would be around 750km. According to the goods

transported, the use of rail transport can become advantageousfrom 500 km, in

considering other variables such as the volume transported, thesafety of the goods

transported, the price of diesel and gasoline, road safety,network maintenance

road, etc. In addition, the effect of road congestion in theMontreal region does not appear to be

not have been taken into account. This aspect can affect thereliability of the service, the

fuel consumption, labor costs, greenhouse gas emissions,

etc.

The initiator must take into account the elements mentioned abovein its analysis and, if

if applicable, indicate whether the comparison between the use ofrail transport and

truck transport is modified.
So what they believe is that Sayona may have under-estimated the distance traveled and say the difference error could be double bad because of the effect of a round trip. Use of rail is a shared resource, so when you ship via train and you are using 2 cars out of 10 you should only be claiming 20% of the environmental impact instead of the full 100%. Also when the train returns on the return trip, I doubt it returns empty, it would most likely be bringing shipments to others in the region which should not impact Sayona at all, so I am curious why they want the environmental impact of the return trip to be weighted fully by Sayona?

The remainder of the the discussion seems to actually be telling Sayona that they can improve their numbers if they take into account some additional variable like "traffic", "Road Safety", and "network maintenance". These are all great points and would probably help tilt the tables towards using rail instead of trucks however this document is supposed to be about the ENVIRONMENTAL impacts of the Authier mine. I am not sure that these additional variables can be treated fully as environmental issues.

The other portion of this that sort of kills me is this. When the original DFS was put together the plan was to ship Spodumene to China via the port of Montreal. Today we already know that 50% will be shipped to Piedmont and will not go by ship, but because the original plan was to go to China they still need to pretend this is the future plan ... IMO this is just plain dumb, because Quebec has taken so damn long and the industry has moved forward Sayona is now answering a question that is no longer valid.