lpd share price, page-9586

I agree with you @Patmeate that the award of our sulphuric acid supply is connected to one of our pending offtake agreements, but perhaps it is the other way around- that we will hear who will be our 3 year supplier of sulphuric acid after or at the same time as an offtake agreement is announced. Across various threads this quarter, many of us have been attempting to connect the numerous dots. Stitching everyone's research together, the following imo could explain our present trail of breadcrumbs:

Page 2 of our last quarterly states: A major milestone was reached in May when the Phase 1 Project transitioned to the developmentphase, demonstrating Lepidico’s confidence that key product supply agreements and project fundingare on the near horizon. Further down the page: Lithium chemical supply discussions are progressing well with three consumers, with a targetdate agreed with one for a binding agreement that fits with Lepidico’s development schedule.

I believe this is the one connected to our sulphuric acid supply, as you pointed out above @Patmeate, management twice referring specifically to the September quarter, i.e., our "development schedule." I won't be surprised if this binding agreement is with BASF, based on many things we discussed earlier, supported by company announcements, specifically:

• transport emissions of our products and by-products from the UAE being 1/3 of those from Namibia to the UAE, Europe therefore being a possible destination
• enlisting GHD to prepare their exhaustive report, perhaps to satisfy BASF's cradle-to-gate Product Carbon Footprint (PCF) requirement
• as @3steps first picked up in the GHD report, management mentioned again in our last 4C "emission savings relatingto use of caesium and rubidium compounds, which could also be significant," BASF producing the caesium based sulphuric acid catalyst Quattro, which reduces SO2 emissions and improves plants' operating efficiency
• management's inclusion in our 31 March 2020 quarterly the option for "the import of seaborne acid" when the UAE is the world's largest producer of sulphuric acid, therefore perhaps we are importing BASF's from Germany
• the present tense language JW used in his email to @loisl1978 which I picked apart in a post on the 16th of August

So, if one of the "three consumers" is BASF, another is our Tier 1 interest, perhaps in the US, thus everyone's conjecture recently about who this could be- LG Energy Solutions or ...? From page 5 of our last quarterly: "One consumer has advised that it requires a relatively substantial sample of lithium hydroxide forevaluation which would require Lepidico’s pilot plant to be run again for at least a two week steadystate campaign. This will only be committed to once negotiations have advanced sufficiently." Then on page 7 it was explained that part of our capital raise funds were needed to expand our pilot plant to produce additional samples.

An outdated Benchmark Minerals Intelligence chart from 2 years ago specified that one of the requirements for supplying a Tier 1 battery manufacturer is providing increased product samples for testing, the fourth bullet point below:


All of the bullet points are applicable of course, if we've attracted the interest of a Tier 1 producer, from the first one- "longer qualification timeline" (hello!) all the way to the last one, hearteningly- that our initial stages obviously haven't failed, as our Tier 1 interest hasn't abandoned us. A "two week steady state campaign" at 25 kg/hr will produce a 8,400 kg sample. That's rather a lot! Any engineers out there? Is it simply 25 kg/hr x 24 hours in a day x 14 days? I read somewhere, probably from BMI, the size of sample that Tier 1 needs, but don't have it to hand at the moment. I do remember it being large. If I find it, I'll post it later. There are a few other things I wanted to mention, but this is already long, so will add tomorrow. All of the above is purely my conjecture- just a lot of pondering while we wait. Not financial advice, dyor, etc....