Here’s the story again in text in case anyone wants to cite any...

Here’s the story again in text in case anyone wants to cite any part and with the link:
I highlighted the part relevant to the ‘22 no voters’.

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/bu...d/news-story/e3a7edd093adb349c2852227b4e73de7
Consolidation of mineral exploration needs to continue, says private equity fund


A historic view of the Greenbushes tantalum and lithium mine when it was being operated by Sons of Gwalia in the late 1990s.

• By NICK EVANS
  RESOURCE WRITER
  
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• 7:46PM NOVEMBER 24, 2023

Consolidation among Australia’s junior mining explorers needs to pick up pace, according to the Australian boss of a key resources private equity fund.

After a record-breaking few years on capital markets, funds are starting to dry up for Australia’s explorers and Resource Capital Fund’s Australian managing director, Brett Beatty, said he believed there was a growing need for junior miners to set egos aside and consolidate landholdings to make sure projects can be funded for the benefit of all shareholders.
“I think it’s becoming more important as Australia’s mining assets become tired – I never liked the word depleted because you can always find more, and there’s always new technology. But if you want to keep running them, then you’ve got to look for different ways to exploit synergies,” said Mr Beattie.

“And historically, we had lots of mining companies that were genuine competitors with each other. But reality eventually sets in and if you don’t work together, if you don’t collaborate, you die on the vine.
“There’s always the catalyst of down markets that force consolidation. And then I think there’s other times when it’s groups like ourselves that sort of bang on the table.”

The private equity firm is currently backing a merger between juniors Australian Vanadium and Technology Metals Australia (TMT), which for years have shared two halves of a significant vanadium deposit in the mid-west of Western Australia.
Vanadium is a key input into steelmaking, but is now emerging as an alternative to lithium-ion batteries for major commercial installations, with vanadium flow batteries offering long duration storage that is not as much a prisoner to temperature extremes and does not degrade in the same way lithium batteries do.


Resource Capital Fund’s Australian managing director, Brett Beatty.

The two companies have been competing for a limited capital pool for the better part of a decade, both arguing the merits for their respective deposits, and the merger push – now supported by both companies’ boards – is facing a backlash from retail shareholders on valuation grounds.

About 9 per cent of TMT shareholders have indicated an intention to vote against the deal – enough to pose a real risk to a shareholder vote on the scheme of arrangement, and Mr Beatty said the merger highlighted the need for explorers – and their retailer shareholder backbone – to look to the long term.
“Whether that’s actually looking for synergies, enhancing the project economics, or just reducing the competition for existing resources or offtake or debt, we’re not particularly attached to any particular management strategy at this point, we just want the best possible outcome for the project,” he said. “We think that’ll deliver an outcome for shareholders on each side.”

The private equity funder was one of the first of its type to target the resources sector, and remains a key player in the industry, both in Australia and elsewhere.

RCF was one of the drivers behind Genesis Minerals’ consolidation of the Leonora gold district, and has been a kingmaker in the emergence of the WA lithium sector.
The private equity fund, through Global Advanced Metals (GAM) – one of the world’s biggest suppliers of tantalum – picked up its initial interest Genesis’s Gwalia gold mine from the ashes of legendary WA gold miner Sons of Gwalia.
Those assets also delivered the company its WA tantalum assets, at Greenbushes in WA’s south, and at Wodgina and surrounding areas in the Pilbara.

Sold down over the last 25 years, Greenbushes has been the world’s biggest lithium mine for decades, and Mineral Resources’ Wodgina operation has ambitions to compete on the same stage.
GAM is now up for sale, after the last of its surplus tantalum portfolio was sold earlier this year to Wildcat Resources as a lithium project – now the subject of competition for control of its Tabba Tabba lithium discovery.