Overall, Uber bullish on Brazil > Western Australia. Brazil...

Overall, Uber bullish on Brazil > Western Australia. Brazil beats WA easily for cost, permits, power and ease of dealing with governments at all levels.

Also, Colina (as we know) will have incredibly low costs to operate including utilities and govt royalty/tax etc (hence our very low AISC).

Summary of the key comments:

- November this year Brazil will host the G20 where a critical minerals agreement will be signed between the U.S. and Brazil
- Brazil can’t be beaten as a pro-mining jurisdiction right now. In July 2023, CG spoke to the governor to request commercial flights be organised into Salinas airfield. 3 months later the governor called saying the first flight was about to happen. This sort of thing would take years in Aus or simply wouldn’t happen at all. LRS recently invested $40k into a radar for the airport to enable commercial jets to fly into Salinas.
- Labour costs are incredibly cheap - likely to be only $35k-$40k per year for a truck driver, whereas this could be $150k+ in Western Australia.
- On this note, some comments that Western Australia is now high cost, highly bureaucratic and takes a long time to get anything done and capital will potentially seek returns elsewhere, particularly with iron ore.
- Western Australia has limited chance of new major lithium discoveries - supposedly a number of companies up there have searched extensively but after AZS there’s been nothing.
- In June, the LRS register went from 25% to 28% institutional ownership with North American and UK funds apparently interested.
- CG believes the U.S. is invested in conversion and battery plants but have no idea where their raw material will come from.
- if LRS ships to U.S. it’s only $40/t. To China is $82/t.
- power for Colina will be 5 cents kWh, all renewable from the dam, only 2% royalty to pay and corp tax rate only 15%.
- Mgt recently completed the SC6 forecast for the DFS and apparently the average between Benchmark and Fastmarkets for 2035 is $2,200/t