LPD Info, page-27

So last night I thought Julian "Joe" might have muddled his timeline to production of LiOH at the UAE chemical plant. He seemed to say that they expected to commission the concentrator at Karibib in either late 2022 or early 2023 but then indicated they expected to commission the UAE chemical plant also in late 2022 or early 2023. I remembered seeing chart showing expected production in 2023 to be not much less than the expected production in 2024 which suggested to me that indeed Lepidico's expectation was that the chemical plant would be commissioned in either late 2022 or early 2023.

But alas, I just started listening to the Crux investor interview with J Welsh again and in the first 30 seconds he says that he expects them to start producing in "late 2023". It seems that some time recently they extended the development of the project by a full 12 months. That is a huge miss.

So I went back and found the presentation with that chart showing the UAE chemical plant being in production for most of 2023. The presentation was the one released on 20 September (just last month). And looking at that presentation it seems that young Julian might be making a habit of muddling the timeline: in that presentation they indicated that the Karibib concentrator was expected to begin being commissioned in late 2022 but the UAE chemical plant was expected to begin being being commissioned in the second half of 2022. That clearly suggests that the chemical plant would start being commissioned before the concentrator. The chart I remembered seeing actually showed they expected 2023 production to be only about 30% down on expected production in 2024, which does indeed suggest that the chemical plant was expected to be in production for much of 2023. It seems to me that there was a fair amount of gilding the lily in that presentation.

However, in the Annual Report, which was released on 18 October, which is after the 20 September presentation and after the 14 October interview with Crux, they finally seem to have got their story straight. The Karibib concentrator is expected to be commissioned in the first half of 2023 and the UAE chemical plant is expected to begin being commissioned 3 months after that. So, going on what is stated in the Annual Report, they expect to go into production late 2023 with the plant producing very little in 2023.