Generally speaking a strategy involving producing and shipping...

Generally speaking a strategy involving producing and shipping Lithium Concentrate or Hydroxide starts at about AUD $2.5M of CAPEX for every AUD $1M of free cashflow (post-tax cashflow). So hypothetically if a project was producing $50M annual free cashflow, the pre-production CAPEX would be about $125M.

With a DSO operation they could use contract mining. There would be very limited pre-production CAPEX at the mine site (fences, roads on the mine site, basic buildings). There is no camp needed due to the nearby town of Snow Lake. There effort at the mine site would be focused on mining .. there are not all the complications associated with building and setting to work a concentrator plant.

The mining could be contracted as could the trucking of ore to the rail head. Keeps CAPEX low.

They might be able to get away with maximum $5M-$10M pre-production CAPEX ( really just a guess ).

The Lithium is near-surface in a vertical ore body ideal for underground mining (and the Snow Lake township is expert at underground mining as are people they know from Tanco which is also an underground mine). Our head Geo Dale used to work at the Gold Mine in Snow Lake many years ago ( an underground mine ).

They would start with an open pit - see the blue-shaded part below. This would be anywhere from 350m to 700m long and perhaps 30m to 50m wide ( incredibly compact ).



The deposit is vertical, which makes it uniquely ideal for underground mining.



This is a picture of the underground access portal for a Lithium Deposit in Finland. Has a very small footprint. Snow Lake Portal would be similar.