General discussion, page-3131

I was just typing a post (below) when I saw your comment re AVZ.
A very good question
I think mainly because we are both gold & Lithium, after the demerger I think Leo will be able to attract appropriate valuations
Also AVZ is now a S&P ASX200 stock. That is a big thing, it allows many super funds etc to invest directly.
Recent unrest in Mali does not help

One of our peers, AVZ today have surpassed a market cap of $3.5b, an all time high.

As Doc Mike said in the recent interview, there are some very good projects out there, but Goulamina is the most advanced.

Manono is a very good project, the largest Resource of all and high grade.

If 51% of Manono is worth $3.5b, what is 40% of Goulamina worth?

How does Goulamina stack up compared to Manono?

Both projects are in Africa

Our Resource is a quarter of the size, however both projects have 20 year mine lives.

Both company’s resources are open, AVZ’s Reserve 2.5 x ours.

Our plant thruput is 2.3mt pa going to 4mt with stage 2, AVZ’s DFS shows 4.5mt pa

AVZ’s grade is 1.65% vs our 1.45%, however our recovery rate is 80% vs AVZ’s 60%, this is because they use DMS which is a cheaper process than our Flotation. AVZ’s strip ratio is significantly better than ours. However our CIF China cost is slightly lower than theirs mainly due to their internal transport costs.

We, along with LTR incurred a significant capex & opex increase with the updated DFS, AVZ’s update in still ongoing & due.

We are fully funded, and have all approvals including a Mining License

AVZ are close to being fully funded, that will probably change with their DFS update, they expect their ML “soon”

We are only producing SP6, they have tin as a by product, they also will be producing downstream Lithium Sulphate.

As @ozblue has pointed out, to make Li Hydroxide, the front end of the plant makes sulphate, the backend turns that into Hydroxide which can be used in batteries. They have no current offtakes for the sulphate, they’d need a converter who has spare backend capacity to sell this. As you’d expect, most converters balance the front & back ends, however with supply shortages, I’m sure someone would accommodate this.

Our project is underway, they are still awaiting a ML & full financing.