IPT 2024
From time to time, I do this.
Provide a free-flowing rant on how I see IPT travelling on its journey.
It’s a long read.
Put on the kettle or open a bottle of your favourite.
It’ll take a while.
Lake Hope is so good it feels a little unreal. So there’s some grounded reality commentary here.
And there’s a little bit of science explained, because not everyone intuitively has clarity on science stuff.
Tenement Rationalisation
Rationalisation to offload the diversity of unnecessary tenements makes good business sense. Going, Going, Gone are the ways of purely being an explorer for IPT. A new sense of pride in achieving in what IPT have always said from the get-go, was finding a world-class deposit.
Tick that box. We can relax. For many reasons.
Environment and Rehabilitation
The Lake Hope mud lakes are biologically sterile - there may be a very hungry spider or two, like everywhere else in the country - and the transport tracks might disturb a few wildlife birds here and there, but the lakeside tracks will need grading / upgrading / re-routing for truck access to / from the lakes themselves, and will need
So no drama there.
Processing
The ‘dual pathway’ processing opportunity presents some interesting outcomes that IPT are working through directly for the PFS-defined outcomes: and it may come down to costs as in OPEX and CAPEX; and it may come down to the specificities of purity vs residual contaminants for testing qualification and end user specifications. Right now it’s all about optimising the processes and completing the PFS.
There’s lots of detail being looked at: such as; where will the location of the processing plants be:
Is it the industrial location where permitting is so much easier, but then greater haulage costs to the coastal export facility? Factor in the precision analysis of costs of 4-trailer diesel semis transporting bulk product trying to go through suburban Perth streets to get to Kwinana, versus hiking it straight to Bunbury - that is the level of detail
Is it close to an export-oriented outcome for bulk transfer and export of by-products, importing supplies, local permitting regulations, usable industrial facilities, etc. etc. etc.
All the pertinent logistics details to go through pre-PFS.
The low temperature LTL Process:
- is a ‘slow cooker’ process at 90ºC
- removes the need for sulphuric acid
- provides processing cost reductions
- reduces processing steps from 5 > 4
- which reduces CAPEX costs even lower
- which the PFS will address.
LTL at 90ºC is achieved with a solar panel heater - well below the boiling point of water. All good and getting even better.
Gearing up for production is being assessed for volume suitability and professionally assessed within the PFS for scale escalation that is appropriate - which may be a pilot plant of 1ktpa, 2ktpa, 5ktpa.
It all depends on the number and volume of incoming grants.
Not my field of expertise, and I don’t need to be across that level of production detail. It is sufficient to know that IPT are on it, and across it, and remaining flexible.
Also, like the Sulphate Process, the LTL Process also produces a fertiliser by-product, which is likely to be one of the key factors in offsetting the operating costs to produce 3N/4N HPA, but just one of many.
TFI: Phosphate and Potash are Critical Minerals, Senate Bill to Solidify (March 14, 2024,
Source) — The Fertilizer Institute (TFI) has commended the U.S. Senate’s bipartisan effort to classify phosphate and potash as critical minerals, highlighting the move as crucial for securing the nation’s agricultural future and food supply.
Again: mitigation of critical mineral supply chain risks.
Trivia point: Did you know?
Roland the Lake Hope operations Manager could well be regarded as a polymath. As in able to connect dots from a vast diversity of data, experimentation, observation, research etc. and compile it, analyse it and synthesise solutions.
And who may or may not, as legend goes, spend unspecified, inordinate volumes of time poring through old mets chemistry patents, for inspiration on the next sequencing process breakthrough to discover better, cheaper, faster, methods of producing HPA.
The guy who, so the story goes, reversed processed the traditional mineral resource deposit discovery methodology, and when discovered on LinkedIn the comments were like:
“Hey, you won’t believe this, this guy is searching sand dunes for aluminium”, which apparently is a rather bizarre geological investigation to undertake.
Noted, that is the complex pointy end of the HPA business. Devising the product outcomes / specs for the individual end users. I believe future customers will have a well-defined specification solution.
I think we have got that covered.
Communications
Communications with potential end users have well and truly commenced and I’m sure there will be staffing additions/consultants engaged to cover cores roles of product testing/marketing/Mets and company promotions/marketing getting the story out and about, and the MD will delegate the appropriate components of social/media/promos/ad campaigns to others. Much later post-PFS other additions will come on board as required.
Again, no issues there either.
Grants and Cap Raises
It’s all about the grants at this stage.
There are several grants applications in the pipeline.
Feb 2024
The Australian Government is strengthening international critical minerals projects through a $40 million grant program.
The grants will provide between $2 million and $20 million in co-funding for early to mid-stage critical minerals projects in Australia.
Eligible activities for the grants include:
- pilot and demonstration plants, capacity expansions, and research and development activities
- development or commercialisation of technology and intellectual property
- critical minerals processing technologies
- development of downstream processing capability.
The western governments and financial institutions are frantically supporting particularly the Critical Minerals sector and a part of Minerals Security Partnerships Forum (MSP) and Minvest. The AU govt. increased from $2B to $4B. We know all this.
ILU$1.25 billion loan
ASMdebt funding package of up to US$600 million (A$923 million )
ARU$840 million (US$550M) rare earths mine and refinery
And overseas,
MEI activating a $250M US Exim loan assisted by Sprott et al.
The WA govt. is so pro mining development that I sense the first grants will be sooner rather than later.
Recent grants:
|
Column 1 |
Column 2 |
Column 3 |
| 1 |
Australian Energy Storage Solutions
|
A pilot Precursor Cathode Active Material manufacturing plant in Kwinana in WA.
|
$5,463,398
|
| 2 |
Australian Strategic Materials Ltd
|
A mining, separation and refining, production facility
|
$6,500,000
|
| 3 |
IGO Ltd
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to complete piloting, mets work, a demonstration feasibility study, a by-product optimisation study and detailed engineering to produce high value nickel-cobalt-manganese precursor cathode active material.
|
$4,600,000
|
| 4 |
Clareville Pty Limited
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Testing and scale up on its novel flotation separation additive increasing recovery with no increase in carbon emissions or environmental impacts.
|
$1,953,225
|
| 5 |
Tungsten Metals Group Pty Ltd
|
Production of ferrotungsten powders for manufacturing for aerospace, medical, energy and defence products.
|
$1,154,000
|
| 6 |
Magnium Australia Pty Ltd
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To commercialise CSIRO-patented technology for clean extraction of magnesium metal, and a Magnesium Refinery Pilot Plant in Collie, WA.
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$6,250,000
|
| 7 |
Queensland Pacific Metals
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The engineering and design for phase 1 of a full-scale refinery.
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$5,000,000
|
| 8 |
EcoGraf Limited
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A graphite qualification facility at Lucas Heights in NSW using sustainable hydrofluoric acid-free graphite refining process.
|
$2,900,605
|
| 9 |
International Graphite Limited
|
Processing graphite from concentrate to battery anode material for use in low emissions technology applications such as batteries.
|
$4,700,000
|
| 10 |
Evolution Mining Limited
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To support plans to retrieve cobalt from mine waste.
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$2,234,965
|
| 11 |
High Purity Quartz Ltd
|
A PFS for a project to build a solar PV grade quartz sand processing facility and a silicon metal production facility.
|
$1,210,500
|
| 12 |
Northern Minerals Limited
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To produce RE Oxide Concentrate for sale to Northern Minerals’ offtake partner, Iluka Resources.
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$5,910,307
|
| 13 |
Tungsten Mining NL
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to study downstream production of Ammonium paratungstate
|
|
I have no doubt that finance will NOT be an initial issue NOR an ongoing concern for the Lake Hope venture at all.
CR
Looking at the half-year financials, Blind Freddie can see that soon enough there will be a CR. With a difference, I doubt there will be options to flog off and depress the SP. I sense that IPT are done with that type of self-defeating bastardry.
Cap raises are an INEVITABLE core procedure of a junior producer, at least until the grants start to kick in, and both the Federal and WA state governments have clearly produced significant, and sometimes stunning levels of grant support and loan facility agreements within the last 12 months, and continue to provide massive support for local mining producers.
But factoring in the incoming grants:
The more grants, the less CR.
The bigger the grants, the less CR.
Consolidation
What is also blindingly obvious, with nearly 3B shares on offer, this this situation is a total roadblock to establishing a decent Market Cap.
This has to be addressed at some point along the path, and imo will probably occur prior to the PFS. We cannot be regarded any longer as a minnow in the game. We want to be taken seriously, then this has to happen. The market knows it cannot move the needle sufficiently with billions of shares on offer.
It means we have fewer shares at a higher price. The $ value stays exactly the same.
No-one gains, no-one loses. The money value of the shares remains the same. Nothing else changes.
Reaction Kinetics
The nanometre or nanometer is a unit of length in the International System of Units, equal to one billionth of a metre.
One nanometre can be expressed in scientific notation as 1×10⁻⁹ m, and as 1/1000000000 metres.
One micron is 1×10⁻
6 m, so 1000 times larger.
The Lake Hope particle size distribution analysis indicates that nearly all the minerals are smaller than 16 microns,
with 60–80% occurring at grain sizes less than 50 nanometers. This means that the surface area of the lake particles rises exponentially with respect to millimetre or micron sized particles. Nanoparticles have phenomenally high surface areas.
For example:
A solid cube of a material 1 cm x 1 cm = 6 sq cm of surface area — the size of a postage stamp.
Same mass, but 1,000 mm sized cubes, totals 60 sq cm — the size of a small mobile phone.
Same mass, but micron size 1,000,000,000,000 cubes — surface area the size of a small car.
Same mass, but nano size 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 cubes — surface area 6,000 square meters — a bit smaller than a FIFA soccer pitch.
So the solid 1 cm cube, roughly like a sugar cube in size, is now spread out over an entire football field, where each individual photosynthetic cell, in every individual blade of grass, can interact with the surrounding air, and receive direct access to the energy of sunlight.
Those tiny particles matter when it comes to reagent chemical leaching reactions and low temperature particle processing. Nano size means things happen so much faster and so much more efficiently. The greater the surface-to-volume ratio that reacting substances have, the faster the reaction time, the more efficient the process, the less expensive it becomes to produce the product, for operating costs, and for initial capex of pilot plants. This is a critical selling point for IPT. No-one else in the world has anything like this high-grade, highly reactive, at surface, bulk commodity, ultra fine resource.
It seems perfectly obvious to me, that the low temperature (LTL) process would not even be possible without the nano-sized Lake Hope mud particles. That’s the
reaction kinetics being determined for the PFS.
Amazing things happen with nano particles. They behave radically differently the smaller they get.
In a good way - things get easier to react.
Just like a cup of tea.
Some may know that tea is made primarily from the Camellia plant, Camellia sinensis. A close relative of the common garden Camellias, japonica and sasanqua.
We could make tea from these common species, but they don’t have the caffeine content, catechin levels or other active ingredients of Camellia sinensis.
But we wouldn’t grab a few leaves off a Camellia sinensis, and drop them into a cup of boiling water.
We would use finely chopped dried leaves in a teapot, diffuser or tea bag.
Because of the vastly increased surface area.
Because of the speed to produce a final product.
Read the tea leaves. And glimpse the future.
Next Steps
Arkun will be drilled early in Q2 so hopefully that is in April.
There is still the XPLOR data and there will be anomalies to decode. I’m going to dig a little deeper into:
“Data synthesis and interpretation in progress of all data collected during Xplor.”
IPT conducted extensive field checking/600-rock chip sampling submitted for comprehensive geochemistry, plus a ground sub-audio magnetics (SAM) survey, a ground audio-frequency magnetotellurics (AMT) survey, and a regional magneto-telluric survey.
Broken Hill still has secrets and might not be ready to disappear quietly just yet. There will be news, and it will be interesting.
And then this:
“IPT is in discussions with a number of companies with a view to partnering in further exploration at Broken Hill.”
Coverage Initiation
Notwithstanding the recent initiation by East Coast Research — there will be coverage initiation by one or more of the full-service financial advisory/stockbroking firms like Bell Potter and Canaccord.
I’m going to issue a public challenge to Bell Potter to initiate coverage.
And the very simple and direct question is to:
@Bell_Potter and
@can_do_wealth
When?
I look forward to that announcement.
Wrap-up
When they talk about the Lake Hope deposit in 10 years time, it will be covered in glittering accolades. It might be mentioned as the Banksy of orebodies — original, authentic, unique, supremely valuable, but not priceless, and worth not millions, but billions of dollars in value. Perhaps Banksy on NFT steroids would be appropriate.
I wonder what the SP trajectory will look like.
I wonder what the IPT dividends would look like in retirement.
This is THE watershed year for Impact Minerals out of all of the entirety of its existence on the ASX. The economics of Lake Hope are undeniable and compelling. Keep an eye out for the grants and upcoming news.
Let me know if I’ve missed something.
Accumulating,
Ice
(20min delay)
