LPD Valuation, page-25

Spent a fair bit of time over the rainy Saturday to do more homework on LPD. Ended up with a fair few questions that I hope I'll get answers to.

There was a slide used a number of times by LPD in the past. Got to say I liked it a lot and was curious why they stopped using it. Last time it appeared (I think) was ~ the AGM Nov 2019. Keep in mind these are LPD's (irrelevant???) comparisons not mine.

Also keep in mind that this slide set as EXPECTATION based upon the PFS



And simply put, in goes 54.9t ore of spodumene at 1.08% Li2O ore & out comes 1 tonne LiOH and some waste product
Likewise, in goes 48.4t ore of lepidolite at 0.9% Li2O ((less ore at less grade) & out comes 1 tonne LiOH & valuable by-products

What's not to like ... MORE WITH LESS .... this is the value of LPD Tech .... we're gunna be rich!!
~12% less ore at a lesser grade to produce the same amount of LiOH

And then along comes the DFS and "spoils" the party somewhat. And AFAICT LPD stops using this slide. And when a company alters its narrative I usually dig deeper.

Here is that exact slide with the DFS overlaid. The goal remains the same i.e. output of 1 tonne of LiOh (the green circle)



What has changed ...?

1) The amount of lepidolite ore needed has increased by ~120%
2) The amount of concentrate needed has increased by 20% (this is what we ship out from Walvis Bay)

Both the are caused by
(A) The hydromet recovery process reduced from 90% down to 80.8% yielding concentrate of 3.23% (down 17% from expected 3.83%)
(B) The Li2O% in the source ore is just 0.46% (down by 50% from the expected 0.90%)

You can see on pg 6 - Key Results of the DFS





From these number you can infer that, to produce
(a) 60,000t of concentrate (i.e. capacity at Karibib) can produce 4,926 tpy of LiOH
(b) 5,000t of LiOH requires 60,900 tonnes of conc.
(c) 5,500t of LiOH requires 66,990 tonnes of conc.


For me this makes the inclusion of Cs2O and Rb2O ultra important to the product. Now while the DFS states there is no known ore Reserves for these, LPD's (former???) partner does have an MRE at the Separation Rapids project that contains these elements - an it ought to know well. They also have another project (Lilypad) that is a pollucite deposit. Worth keeping an eye on lest we think we have a monopoly.

Just some thoughts to ponder