Interesting read.Maybe Westfarmers will be interested in KGD in...

Interesting read.

Maybe Westfarmers will be interested in KGD in the future if our drill results come back positive???

Most people associate Wesfarmers (ASX: WES) with some of Australia’s best known retail names such as Bunnings, Kmart and Officeworks. While this is where the bulk of the earnings are generated now, the role of Wesfarmers in everyday Australians’ lives actually runs deeper than it would appear on the surface with a growing healthcare and resources exposure.

As one of the few remaining conglomerates, Wesfarmers has a good track record of acquiring and divesting strategic assets. Headquartered in Perth, the company has cycled through many different types of energy assets, starting with coal mines in the 1990s and 2000s and oil and gas assets through a minority stake in Quadrant Energy in 2015. Fast forward to today, Wesfarmers has a 50 per cent stake in a joint venture with one of the world’s largest lithium producers, SQM, in Mount Holland lithium mine through its 2018 acquisition of Kidman Resources.

With 84 million tonnes of reserves and 186 million tonnes of lithium resources available, Mount Holland is a high-grade hard rock deposit with an estimated 50 year mine life. Construction of the concentrator is over 90 per cent complete with first spodumene production expected at the end this calendar year. The Kwinana refinery, which will produce battery grade lithium hydroxide, has production expected to start in the first half of calendar year 2025, ramping up to 50,000 tonnes per year. The joint venture has also indicated their intention to double the lithium hydroxide production capacity to 100,000 tonnes once initial construction plans have been completed.

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