Rinse and repeat game to flush out all the little ppl, ( not targeting us but we are just the most vulnerable and therefore likely to respond to this kind of action ), to accumulate for the moment when ARL's phone starts ringing for a partnership or whatever.
One thing I was interested to learn was that this is not a remake of a failed venture by heron.
On the contrary, they spent a good deal of money identifying the geology of the zone of deposit, had to refocus to core businesses I'm guessing after the GFC falsely crashed the commodity marketss, and then created ARL to target those richer zones with a dedicated team for that.
It's given me heart for this as we can now note that it is a smaller venture aimed at firstly getting into the good ground, which would then enable ARL to gear up to larger scales of economy.
Kinda the way I did my excavation business- start off focussing on what I could achieve, keep spending down and then build on that.
That leaves us with 'what will other players do?' I'm betting that they'll fall over eachother trying to get ethical producers, next they'll look at the untapped deposits.
Let's all note that thankfully, auto makers are a lot more sensitive to issues of ethics.
( on the other hand- apple's angelic response to factory workers in China jumping out of factory windows in their Chinese factories? Wrap the buildings in netting so they can't jump out ).
Cars, trucks, buses and soon- military vehicles which actually comprise huge fleets of vehicles- are going electric. Power grids are going to storage- new grids which couldn't be built due to distance etc will also pop up in places like Africa and India.
The demand will soon put so much forward pressure on cobalt especially, ( more in most batteries than lithium and over half being sourced from what is at times a defacto warzone ), that I'd not argue too much with someone telling me that the historically supported prices of $50+ per pound of cobalt will return.
Demand grows fairly organically, supply does not.
Again, ash deserves a reply- and my reply is that I failed to take profit being greedy, therefore I'm determined to research my way to my next decision, as opposed to following my emotions.
Conclusion? I am staying.
Ppl into researching extraction costs might like to go look at 'SSX' developed by the CSIRO.
Leeching chemicals 95% recycled as opposed to 50? or so cuts down the input but also the clean up/removal cost of those chemicals. ( unused chemicals don't get flushed into the local drinking water dam here in oz and cananda etc & are therefore quite a cost to the overall extraction/production process ).
In researching that, do be sure to remember that the CSIRO is a government body which openly aims to support Australian businesses etc, not develop/improve techniques and then lock them up for their own benefit only.... ahem my old friend improved lithium extraction which I won't mention by name ahem ahem.
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