As far as I am aware, there is no binding agreement that we have...

As far as I am aware, there is no binding agreement that we have to be given all of Mercedes' product, but if you think about it for a while I'm sure you could understand the depth of stupidity required to engage another recycler to recycle mercedes' product in Neometals' recycling plants.

If someone high up in Mercedes was actually that inept yet fortunate enough to get their way, they would have needed to weave an amazing tale to their Board about the merits of selling someone else all of their old batteries, that third party recycling them in a Primobius recycling plant (where we would take our snip anyway), then buying back the output having had to cover not only the cost of recycling, but the snip taken by the third party.

The alternative would be to sell the batteries to the third party outright for recycling in the third party's own plant, and have an offtake with them, but that would not only paint Mercedes into a corner regarding the supply of service to them of recycling, it would require Mercedes to sell all of their batteries to them, and they would be paying a far higher price for their own product than the 10% we will be charging them.

Primobius a) allows Mercedes to retain ownership of the battery cells, and b) builds Mercedes' own plants for them, at cost plus fee. This is why Mercedes chose Neometals/Primobius after a typically stringent tender process. They are in a wholly unique driver's seat.

Remember Chris Reed said we would possibly only be able to handle TWO clients the size of Mercedes, it is that big a deal. I wonder what that order book is looking like? I wonder when we'll find out

If you are worried about how easy or hard it would be for Mercedes to be doing sneaky things on the sly with another recycler, remember that Neometals have staff working in the Mercedes business in Europe, on battery production and science, for no other reason than to optimise Mercedes' recycling process in Primobius recycling plants. It would again take someone of extraordinary stupidity within the Mercedes organisation to put themselves in this position with Neometals, but be secretly (or otherwise) planning to take their business elsewhere to a third party that has a different hydrometallurgical flow sheet. And again, which of our competitors is offering to build a plant for the client AND allow them to retain ownership of the batteries throughout?

They can deal with anyone they like in Europe, but why would they? It's like buying the Parramatta Eels, recruiting all the best players, upgrading the stadium, churning out thousands of pages of unique strategies......then placing substantial bets on other teams to beat them. Theoretically possible, but if one thinks that little of the nous within Mercedes, I'm not sure why they would have placed any value on the commercial relationship. Ever.