Hi everyone, I am back from a few weeks of vacation time. I have of course been checking in on my phone when internet has been available and when I have not been enjoying life. It seems like it has been pretty rocky ... not just here but all around the market.
My trip was spent entirely in Canada. Toronto, Quebec City, Montreal, Val D'Or and finally to Ontario to the Algonquin Park. 55 hours of driving time all together.
During my travels I contacted Sayona and was able to schedule a tour of NAL, this post is to give everyone a glimpse at my impressions.
The trip from Montreal to Val D'Or was beautiful, with lots of elevation gains and lake after lake, each offering a view more picturesque than the previous one. It was about a 6.5 hour drive from point to point. Once I got to Val D'Or it was more flat and farmlands.
The next morning I made my way to NAL which is about a 45 minute drive from my hotel. The last 12 Km were on a gravel road named "Quebec Lithium". Along this road there were several side roads where I assumed you could gain access to Jourdan's property.
I was just about to think I made a wrong turn or the GPS has guided me to the middle of nowhere when, I found the distinctive "green" buildings that I have seen over and over again in photos.
The parking lot was not overly full of cars, but I would estimate 20 to 30 vehicles were there when I parked. I later found that there were additional cars parked elsewhere, but not more than 6 or 7 more.
My first impression was "This place is HUGE". It is one thing to see a drone flyover with no real point of reference to size, but quite another to be there on the ground and see it. I was amazed. I had to check in with security and Cindy Valence and Richard Saint-Jean walked out to greet me on my way in.
I have attended several zoom conferences with both Cindy and Guy in the past but I was not familiar with Richard. We grabbed a quick cup of coffee while Richard introduced himself. Both Cindy and Richard speak both French and English as do most of the people I encountered in Quebec. One of the first things that I asked Richard was how long he had been on the job and why he chose Sayona. His answer was 3 months for the first question, but his answer to the 2nd was more detailed. He said I have a good reputation in mining and wanted to be with a company that would continue that, it seems he interview Sayona just as much as Sayona interview him, and took the job only after he felt comfortable that the funding would be there to bring the mine back to life.
For only being on board 3 months I found him to be very up to date on the mine.
We finished our coffee and took a drive over to the pit, along the way he pointed out feature of the mine like the tailings pond, which is more the size of a small lake, he also showed me the general area where the 'dry tailings storage" would be located. Once we got to the pit I was once again amazed just how freaking large this area is. I snapped these pics but again without reference points its difficult to gain perspective of size. Look at the cell tower I have highlighted and you might start to understand how huge this is.
Notice the cell tower for reference to size.
This pit represents only about 15% to 20% of the area that will eventually be mined. I could hear diesel pumps going and noticed flexible black pipe that was fed under the road way. They are currently dewatering the pit, there is a lot of water that has accumulated over the past 4 years and needs to be removed, unfortunately they can't just pump like no tomorrow so it will take a bit of time to fully empty the pit. Richard estimated about 25 meters of water. I would not even care to estimate how many millions of gallons of water that would be. I picked up a rock for a souvenir, while Richard pointed out the general direction they would be mining in. You can see by my photo that there are really good areas with bright white and then not so good areas, this is why Authier is needed to blend in and even out the bad spots One of the things that they are anxious to find out is how much ore was left in the bottom of the pit, they know there is some but the question is "how much?". Whatever is left in the pit is like free money. Someone else has already gone to the time, energy and expense to remove the ore, all Sayona will need to do is truck it over to the plant and start processing.
Another pic for reference, notice the black pipe which is part of the dewatering, Richard in the foreground and me in the back.
We got back in the truck and continued on a road that went to the other side of the pit, we slowed and Richard showed me the outcropping for the next dyke that they will be starting on in 2024, he said this will be much better ore and more consistent. with much wider veins.
Down the hill from there, you could see 2 excavators that were working. In the past there was a mining camp on site where 500 men were lodged, these old structures need to be removed to clear the way.
We circled back to where the concentrator is located. In the lot there were several big mounds of which resemble sand dunes. These were processed ore that was being used as sample material when requested. Richard found a small zip lock bag in the truck and gave me a 2nd souvenir.
Beyond this point there were the crushers and conveyors that move the ore into the plant for processing. I was listing to Richard and did not snap any other pics while we talked.
The concentrator building is very large and houses both the concentrator and the carbonate plant. I did not fully get the top of the building in but you get the gist, it is about 5 stories tall.
We entered the 2nd floor which has a wire grate walkway where you can see out to other areas. There were several work crews busy working on various elements of the concentrator whether they were doing maintenance or installing new bits I could not tell but I did notice pallets with what appeared to be fresh deliveries but not large enough to be the the ones that were pictured on the truck, in one of the posts last week.
I did not take photos inside.
Richard walked me through the plant explaining how the ore moves form place to place and what occurs, and why it is important to the process, I found him to be very very good at explaining the process and wish I could have made a video of his methodical walk through of the process. He showed me where the optical sorter would be and the magnetic separator. Both of these should increase the plant yield and they are anxiously awaiting their arrival.
From there we went back down to the floor level and transitioned into the actual carbonate plant. Now first off let me tell you what I imagined a 40% to 50% complete carbonate plant looked like in my mind and then I will tell you what I saw.
I imagined there would be engineering blueprints, permits and possibly a foundation for a building. What was in actuality there was the whole 2nd half of the the same building, so the building is done, that seems pretty huge right there but it was even more complete than that. The Kiln which Richard valued at about $50 Million dollars was already installed and had been running in the past, beyond the Kiln I don't know if I can accurately describe the and Richard did not know the English word for it, but it was a series of poles with what looked liked a 2 or 3 gallon buckets at the base of each, when the plant is running these poles and buckets would vibrate or agitate. I believe the carbonate would accumulate in the buckets and be harvested. To me the plant looked like it was fairly complete and had produced carbonate in the past as I saw in another building with pallets of carbonate labeled "Quebec Lithium" . Richard said that they could produce "batches" of carbonate, which appears to be a slow process but still a capability that I was not aware of and certainly improved the value of this plant by quite a bit in my mind.
Once we completed the tour we headed back to the office area and had lunch.
My overall impression is that they will indeed hit their goal of March 2023 and would not be at all surprised if this began even sooner. It was by no means a ghost town, as there were workers busy doing tasks all around the property. The carbonate plant maybe only 50% done in the sense of dollars but was way more advanced than what I dreamed it would be. I was looking at the 50 million dollar kiln and thinking we bought the whole property for 100 million - it has to be the steal of the century.
If this is only valued at $1 Billion they must have used thrift shop pricing because everywhere I looked, I saw dollar signs and could not even begin to image building this place from green field for anything less than $2 Billion, then you have to value the ore the infrastructure and the time spent getting permitted ... it is far in excess of $1 Billion price from the PFS.
Last pic - this is the outside of the section of building that is the carbonate plant. The large pipe is the exhaust from the kiln - from that you should be able to judge how large this piece of equipment is.
I am hoping to go back in a year to see the plant in full production mode.
If you are worried about SP and all the market crap going on, I hope you can look beyond that and see this gem for what it is.
(20min delay)