LST123, just to be clear, the new generation of batteries will...

LST123, just to be clear, the new generation of batteries will still be Li based. Niobium would be a replacement for cobalt being used in the current generation of batteries. But there will be an obvious threefold benefit with substituting Nb for Cobalt. 1. greatly reduced fire risk, 2. multiple more charging cycles in the life of the battery. 3. Ultra-fast charging times.

But let's look beyond that. I remember reading an article posted on HC probably 10 years ago about the problems with sourcing Cobalt that everyone seemed to just want to sweep under the carpet back then. For starters there is hardly any cobalt in the world mined as a stand-alone product. Mostly it is a byproduct of Nickel and/or Copper mining.........but what happens if there is a price crash in base metal commodity prices? Right now, we are seeing the price of nickel crashing resulting in the decimation of BHP profits. This oversupply is tipped to last until the end of the decade. It will hardly be worth mining nickel to get at the byproduct of cobalt. The other big problem is that the majority of the world's cobalt is coming out of The Democratic Republic of the Congo and Zambia. Anyone who has had the heart broken by miners operating in Africa (as I have) will realize that I need say no more. But I will say more. The influence of Russia and China is rapidly growing in African countries.....mainly for the purposes of getting at their mineral resource. This sovereign risk presents a problem to the west akin to Brazil on steroid.

But we have WA1. Niobium can be mined as a primary resource with anything else such as REE or phosphate being nothing more than the cherry on top. And WA1 is in a safe mining jurisdiction. So, we can add all that to the benefits of Niobium as a substitute for cobalt as it relates to battery performance.