Global lithium Podcast - Joe & Nigel Discussion, page-50

Joe basically doesn't have a clue about hard rock. He's an old school brine guy that has a good understanding of that process for O.G. uses, but from 2015 he's been out of his depth about lithium in the coming battery grade world.

He used to flat out say that hard rock didn't have a chance of competing with brine due to costs and the large scale of operations in South America etc, plus all the other discredited crap that was all the fashion at the time. He never spoke about the terrible grades coming out of brine that the Chinese battery makers couldn't use, which explained their preference for Australian spodumene, as if Greenbushes couldn't tell you that.

Even Oricobre were saying in their own announcements that the brine feedstock from South America was being rejected by battery manufacturers in China en masse and Oricobre are brine producers from South America. Yet he kept banging on with the same tired junk that these mega brine producers would destroy the expensive stupid rock crushers.

He straight up refused to acknowledge that Altura even had a product worthy of export (didn't even see the MET results and kept banging on about how the METs weren't proven) despite the fact that the Chinese preferred it even to PLS (it is claimed). He eventually conceded around 2017/18 if I remember correctly that PLS would be able to compete in the market (or maybe it was even later). This is the reason he blocked me on twitter actually, not because I was rude, not at all, but because I pointed out that in addition to Pilbara Minerals, Altura would be in the export mix when they finished their plant, and that their product would be battery grade quality. Which was true. So he blocked me.

Long story short, nobody needs him in their corner to legitimise their lithium operation. All AVZ have to do is keep delivering for shareholders and Lowry can keep raving.