Gordon Stein, CFO of CleanTech Lithium, explains why CTL acquired the 23 Laguna Verde licenses. Watch the video here.
London South East prides itself on its community spirit, and in order to keep the chat section problem free, we ask all members to follow these simple rules. In these rules, we refer to ourselves as "we", "us", "our". The user of the website is referred to as "you" and "your".
By posting on our share chat boards you are agreeing to the following:
The IP address of all posts is recorded to aid in enforcing these conditions. As a user you agree to any information you have entered being stored in a database. You agree that we have the right to remove, edit, move or close any topic or board at any time should we see fit. You agree that we have the right to remove any post without notice. You agree that we have the right to suspend your account without notice.
Please note some users may not behave properly and may post content that is misleading, untrue or offensive.
It is not possible for us to fully monitor all content all of the time but where we have actually received notice of any content that is potentially misleading, untrue, offensive, unlawful, infringes third party rights or is potentially in breach of these terms and conditions, then we will review such content, decide whether to remove it from this website and act accordingly.
Premium Members are members that have a premium subscription with London South East. You can subscribe here.
London South East does not endorse such members, and posts should not be construed as advice and represent the opinions of the authors, not those of London South East Ltd, or its affiliates.
All limited companies have shareholders. I know where to look, but its all in the public domain. its called do your own research. Fully agree that all companies need a contingency plan in the event that there is an interruption in their supply chain, i also agree that all companies have to demonstrate their reliability before expecting any business at all.
I asee there is a lot of tosh being written here about what LCM does. This from their W site:
"...At this company, we take neodymium oxide and we first convert that into neodymium metal. Which we then alloy with other metals to make NdFeB alloys. We melt the materials together, we cast them in a particular way, and we make alloys of particular compositions...."
https://www.lesscommonmetals.com/node/327
So that will be separated Nd2O3, purified from mixed rare earth oxide. Something that presently is not done at any rare earth mine I know of, something that only one separation facility in the West that I am aware of presently does. There are also a few in China.
To my knowledge LCM gets all their Nd2O3 from China. To my knowledge they purchase less than ten tonnes per year.
The number of other Western sources of purified N2Os is to change however.
DP, think or don't know? are you able to speak on their behalf. very interesting shareholding structure. With a very strong bias to Singapore. Not sure the shareholders would welcome an operation that means they have no reason to start and stop their own supply chain within the UK. especially when on the face of it, they could add 65% to last years bottom line on freight savings alone.
DP, before we continue with this discussion, do you really want to drag LCM into it. As I said before, there is no comparison between the two projects, and taken at face value, LCM actually stand to increase their profitability from a competitively priced local supplier. (note the emphasis on "on the face of it"). However, if you would like to continue, just say so. word of warning. im not sure LCM will be too pleased.
Get the facts correct DP. LCM have been given a grant to carry out a feasibility study on the Rare Earth supply chain and NOT to build a supply chain.
Please get your facts correct before you start spouting your usual rubbish.
DP whilst desirable, it is a good job that the project isn’t dependent on the ATF isnt it?. The figures touted around as to the value of the ATF support represents less than 10% of the totalled required CAPEX. Nice to have, and very helpful, but it wont kill the project if it doesn’t materialise. At the moment there is no suggestion that it wont
What i am having real trouble getting my head around is how you are comparing Less Common Metals with this project. Taking nothing away from them as a company or from the individuals who own and run it. However you brought the subject up.
LCMs turnover in 2020 was apparently £ 6.6 million pounds. (On which they made approx #200,000, which for many companies these days is an achievement). This represents in the region of 500 or 600 MTs of finished product. The Pensana project is for 12,500, with a projected turnover of $550 million p.a. This isnt comparing apples with oranges, it is comparing a water melon with a grape. They aren’t comparable. I would very much hope that LCM will find the new source of raw material available to them from Pensana as a huge plus to their business.
Hogsnipe, not to mention the production and availability of huge quantities of hydrogen by Equinor at their proposed plant at the saltend site. Making Pensana position unique in the UK and Europe in respect of potential for NdPr magnet recycling.
Tony: The possibilities for Pensana are much wider than just Longonjo. Follow this link:
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1002072118300139
and you'll find this:
"Powder River Basin is the world’s largest low-sulfur subbituminous coal deposit containing ~1.07
trillion tons of in-place coal resources and produced 40% of coal in the U.S.[10] and thus
potentially contains 46 million metric tons of REEs, which can meet the REEs demands of
the U.S. for ~3000 years at the country’s 2016 REEs consumption rate. Extraction of REEs
from these unconventional resources could be the way to secure domestic supply of these
critical materials"
The UK is also littered with bituminous coal- fired power station fuel ash bonds and slurry lakes and the technology to extract >99% purity RE metals from this biohazard is now less than a year away.
Newer and simpler hot-melt methods of recycling wind turbine nacelles to recover high purity NdPr alloys are also just around the corner.
If Pensana can be flexible and tailor Saltend's capability to not only refine Longonjo's sulphate concentrate, but also handle these huge recycling opportunities, it has a very strong business case to put to UK government and pull in significant BEIS investment support in the short term.
Rare earths are generally at lowish percentages in mining ore. They need to concentrated and refined to a decent percentage so as to avoid huge volumes of ore being shipped from Angola to Saltend. The mine site will deliver a concentrated rare earth sulphate and its NdPr percentage is around 36%. As it arrives in Saltend the current intention and plans which are associated with any ATF funding involve processing this concentrate to deliver the rare earth oxides. A separate final process converts NdO into the NdPr metal. The entire development in the business plan is to get to the oxides and another stage is required in the development to produce metal. Eventually Pensana can deliver that stage if necessary, but who is to say if it is better for an existing company to receive the oxide and deliver the final added value stage. A grant to LCM may facilitate that process. LCM may also find their expertise may be valuable and to act as a consultancy to deliver a next stage development at Pensana Saltend. Nobody wants to re-invent the wheel in all of this and the volume of metal required is significant and what maybe needed for EV cars and other devices could be rather different to energy generating windfarms.