PLS have had a problem with their deposit both at the mining cost, veiny, low grade and high strip ratios, and at the conversion cost, with impurities; particularly iron. Another clue is below if you see what it is shipping, SC5.5, not SC6.0. (See below). PLS also does not make a profit.
AVZ has the great advantage that due to its at and near surface, lowest strip ratio, high grade homogenous deposit it is in the lowest cost quartile to mine, and due to its low impurities(the purest and cleanest) it is able to produce SC6 without costly beneficiation, and the more highly refined and higher valued primary lithium sulphate and lithium hydroxide cheaply. "SCT, which has designed about 85% of all the hydroxide plants in the world, have said they've never seen such a clean product."(see below) Having the 3rd largest tin resource globally is a bonus as well.
High-level independent metallurgical test verification of Manono'slower iron, fluorine and phosphorous levels - and projected significantly lower open pit stripping rates - underline the incredible latent value in the DRC project."We think this project is completely different to every other project out there because it is so large - we're not talking about 10m-wide zones, it's 200m,"says Ferguson.
"But it's not just about being the biggest in the pack, it's very much about that scale translating into value, which comes back to quality.
"It's the nature of the beast at Manono, with such a big, wide [pegmatite] body; it's cooled slowly, so we've got large crystals and a cleaner pegmatite.We've literally got, one side to the other, a single zone, and the wall rocks are black,and the pegmatite is white … so we can just strip it down either side and not worry too much about dilution. It's pretty much 1.65% all the way through!
"SCT, which has designed about 85% of all the hydroxide plants in the world, have said they've never seen such a clean product- just really high grade and no detrimentals of any issue whatsoever. We have low fluorine, very low phosphorous, the iron is down to 0.4% in the product … and we'll probably get that down further with more tweaking. There is 2-4% mica in the body itself, but once it's processed it's down to … less than 1.5% mica, and we'll get that down further too."
When comparing to PLS AVZ is planning a 10 Mtpa(report soon!) which with its resource could easily ramp up to 20 Mtpa plus with its ready access to large amounts of lithium. And, just taking the base case of a 10 Mtpa plant it is already 2 times greater than PLS's 2 plants combined! where PLS has a MC of 9.6 Bn, and a similar amount of shares to AVZ, whose current MC is 2.6 Bn!
Therefore, the room for growth for AVZ is E.N.O.R.M.O.U.S. to say T.H.E. L.E.A.S.T!-PRESS HERE and why it is still V.E.R.Y. U.N.D.E.R.V.A.L.U.E.D.! compared to PLS which is highly overvalued!
AIMO
