Possibly the world's largest hard-rock spodumene resource, page-33

It's a pity about the location of Birimian's resource in respect to logistics on its own and AVZ's is actually worse..., BUT; it's the potential sheer size of the actual resource where lies the difference . The size of AVZs resource would easy warrant and suck up the cost of an on / near site Chem plant. I did post on the Bermian threads some time ago regarding logic costs as at about the same time i was working on the coatings for movement of about 4mt over a period of about 9 months for an actual project , the logistic cost for Bermian on a 2000km round trip looked horrendous , the legal GCM (gross combined mass) on trucks in Mali certainly didnt help figures either at 56 tonne i think it was minus actual truck / trailer unit weight, payload was only around the 40 tonne fully loaded and the cost per litre for diesel in Mali was and still is 10% higher than world average and they burn about 110 litres per 100km on a decent road. Imagine trying to haul 2mtpa out by road trains considering a truck loading , travel , unloading and return cycle of about 4-6 days for 40 tonne of concentrate.

Manono is even further in distance to port, your figure of 2200km; well do the trucks return back empty or full or cargo to off load in the region and then pick product up at Manono for another 2200km trip to port, that's a 4400 return trip; could you imagine the number of trucking units / fuel / manhours / servicing cost that would be required haul out such a mammoth resource.

A chem plant producing LiOH to shrink the logistic cost is the only way to go. $2-250 per tonne to port costs into a $15000-$20000 p/t product is better than $2-250 per tonne transport to port cost into a $850 p/t product and that IMO is the big difference between AVZ and BGS...a resource the size of AVZ would easy absorb the cost of a chem plant into the tonne cost considering tonnage over its life, unfortunately not the case for BGS.