This is where Joseph we need our board and our new CFO to have...

This is where Joseph we need our board and our new CFO to have his stuff sorted with a completed Bankable feasible study that you would be also hitting the debt market up to fund 50 % of the capex requirement with , plus tapping into some of those liquid pools of government money out there. I think Lake are tapping some export credit agency in the UK for some debt funding. Given this should get the green tick from lenders and we are a certainly a sexy industry at present, even though with have no track record of borrowing, we should be able to secure debt funding of 50 % of capex requirement at a rate of around 8-9 % , would be my guess, with principal and interest deferred until start up of production.

I would be also trying to debt fund in USD but to help get a lower borrowing rate plus all our export receipts will also be denominated in USD, so makes sense to borrow in this currency so it acts as a "natural hedge". So if the AUD really strengthens in the coming years and I suspect it will with the commodity boom now set in motion by events in Ukraine, even if the AUD equivalent amount you are selling for is reducing as the AUD/USD appreciates , the debt obligation too is also reducing. This is what they call a natural exporters funding hedge.

Achieve that and assuming you need to finance your quoted figure of USD $ 230 million, & 50 % coming from debt, that leaves $ 115 Million USD coming from equity which on today's exchange rate of 0.75, would require about $ 153 M AUD, call it $ 160 M by the time you pay cap raising fees etc. On today's closing price and assuming you encouraged existing shareholders to contribute to the additional equity by offering renounceable rights say to subscribe for 1 share for roughly every 2 shares currently held, say at a discount of 20 % to today's close ie $ 1.60 , to encourage shareholder full take up ( obviously we are likely to be much higher by the time we get to this funding step, hence even less shares required to be issued), you would only need to issue 100 M extra shares on these metrics. Therefore we could be away into production with only circa 400 M shares on issue. If JP and the Galan board can pull that off they deserve every option they will get ( obviously those options would add to that circa 400 M figure I just estimated).

Getting ahead of ourselves I know but if we were then selling 40,000 ton of chloride per year and making lets be conservative on today's prices and say only $ 10 K per ton USD margin, that is about $ 530 M ebitda per annum and you would have that $ 150 M AUD equivalent debt paid off in less than half a year. That is mind blowing but not unachievable. After paying interest, tax and corporate costs you would probably then fall around a profit after tax of mid to high $ 300 M's and be nearly $ 1 per share in earnings. If as @8horse said earlier today if we can firm up around 4 MT of LCE equivalent which would convert back to circa my guess 2 MT of "reserves", that gives us around 50 years of production and would probably help cement the company with a PE ratio of something 10 X or higher . Hence right there you have a $ 10 + per share company ( $ 1 in earnings per share x P?E ratio of 10+ ) and we haven't got to making a higher value added battery grade product yet either. It then would be rinse and repeat 2-3 years later to borrow again ( next step but you would lever even more debt funding) to build out the facilities to do battery grade production. That then sets you up to really drive the value in the medium term of the project post start up.