Ryan Mee, CEO of Fulcrum Metals, reviews FY23 and progress on the Gold Tailings Hub in Canada. Watch the video here.
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MajorOak
Your views are certainly helpful and thanks for posting them. This board is frankly a pleasure to visit and very informative, thanks to some knowledgeable and enthusiastic posters.
I will take a look at what Vulcan is doing. I expect mineral rights are a bit different in Germany but I don't know. CL has gained exploration rights from CUSN for its acreage (30k+) and a summary of the arrangement is available on the CUSN website. I can't remember who the exploration rights at Trelavour were gained from - it might be Imerys. The Crown Estate has provided exploration rights to CL for offshore exploration. Presumably the favoured 2 km deep holes could start on land and go offshore some way - by not being so deep - i.e. angled.
It is the latter that will be on stream soonest with the biggest output. This operation is highly likely to use the Lepidico process, for which CL paid £2m for exclusive rights to use it in the UK I understand. This is a low energy process which fits with the ESG credentials that will be so important.
Geolithe's process is one of the front runners for selection to bring into use at UD.
It is slightly puzzling to me that CL takes people to see the UD site, which at the moment is planned to have a fraction of the output of the Trelavour site, rather than the latter. Perhaps if is a longer drive, perhaps there are things going on which are commercially sensitive............................................ any thoughts or news on Trelavour therefore is most welcome.
VIS , Thank you for a sensible and detailed answer.
May I suggest looking at Vulcan Resources in Germany and look at the speed of operation, scale up is already starting both in processing at on site and the buying up of land access etc. I think British Lithium and Cornish Lithium will use this model.
As for the DLE tech. The type of lithium ie mica based is part of the Westphalian which stretches from the Czech/German big lithium projects. As this geological feature stretches under and across France I would expect Geolithe SAS and access to extremely similar rock type in France to get the deal.
Then the power situation. My only suggestion is based on two things. 1 - Continuity of supply and 2 - Expense of supply in difficult places and by no means do I regard Cornwall to be difficult, but an example of increased support for continuity to a facility possibly could be offered by looking at
https://www.world-nuclear-news.org/Articles/Nine-Mile-Point-to-produce-hydrogen-for-self-supply
There is quite a large push within the last 2 months for hydrogen storage silo's ( like the old gas silo's but hopefully not as big but more localised ) and there are several companies who specialise in remote hydrogen supply and generation replacing the old diesel generator.
This may well be a solution and a carbon friendly one too.
I hope you find my views helpful and wish us all the best.
By securing the baseload generation you wouldn't have intermittency
Thanks for your observations CK.
Would large load customers want intermittent supplies? i.e. when the sun shines or wind blows.
Perhaps they could take more at overload times, but given the capital invested in their businesses I would have thought it unlikely that they could stand idle until power costs were low. Perhaps, as you say, if surpluses could be stored to even out their release it might work, but the cost of storage might nullify any savings of using the excess power.
As you mention, moving power around is a massive issue in Cornwall. We have a massive amount of embedded generation, but the irregularities of it cause huge issues - sometimes we are importing power, others we are exporting.
The problem is you basically have to design for the two extremes, you can have maximum wind and solar generation at a time of minimum demand (say a Sunday afternoon) or you could have minimal generation at a time of maximum demand - say a January weekday evening about 6pm when we are sitting in an Atlantic High - so no wind or solar.
The next issue is the areas of maximum solar and wind generation are areas of minimal load, I.e. rural areas, as tgat is where the land is available for panels and turbines, so you then need to overcome the issue of moving the power around locally.
Storage projects such as batteries and pump store schemes are going to become essential to overcoming this issue, as is low footprint embedded baseload generation I.e. Deep Geothermal.
Getting significant amounts of power out of Cornwall is going to be a huge issue, as ultimately its geography makes large numbers of transmission routes difficult - the best options maybe DC interconnections to Wales/Ireland/France. Of course the alternative is to create large load customers in the area - battery gigafactories/mines/factories.
Thanks Major Oak for your thoughts.
We heard that there are something like 76 brine extraction businesses trying to prove their processes. CL is going to buy in the best process sytem and use it. They have narrowed that field of 76 down to 24 and then run tests and have further narrowed their potential partners to 2 or 3. Geolithe SAS from France has performed very well as has Precision Periodic from Orlando Florida, G4E from New Zealand are also in the running. Names may be slightly wrong as I noted how the names sounded.
CL have been able to extract down to 5 ppm Li. The kit will be very cheap to build. So little capital employed for DLE from Brine.
CL expect to be producing around 11,000 tonnes of Lithium ( I assume carbonate) in 2025. The majority of that will be from Trelavour from rock or mine waste. DLE from Brine will ramp up from about 500 tonnes from that date.
British Lithium seem to be more advanced in their development. They have not gone down the route of looking at all the processes that are available on the world market but have developed their own. They already have a pilot plant up and running and have patented 3 processes of their own with more to come. They seem to have a good knowledge not just of the process but the way to scale up. My understanding is that they expect to be producing 20,000 tonnes per annum around the same time.
Andrew Smith (BL) talked about Cornwall having a huge green energy advantage, as did CUSN. There are lots of panels on solar farms and turbines down here, but the cable to take it away is low capacity so a lot of the time it cannot be used and presumably the turbine owners have to be paid NOT to produce electricity. I sense a deal there for our companies and possibly a smelter.
My hope is the HMG provide finance in exchange for golden shares in these companies, to provide secure supply for the UK.
Given what is at stake - the car industry and more, some 800,000jobs, I cannot see the HMG allowing the companies, materials or know how falling into foreign hands. BP, Shell bids - that might be allowed, but even then I suspect assurances would have to be give about supplying UK manufacturers.
The map I mentioned in an earlier post showed the European sites for 26 gigafactories. for Li battery production. Each of those likely to cost £1bn or multiples of that. Imagine the raw material that is going to have to be input to justify that investment....... It is billions of value of Lithium every year.
The story for tin and copper is also very good, so CUSN thro' SC, UD etc etc has many ways to explode in value.
On finance by the way ECGD guarantees look to be on the cards. If so, project finance at 5% is therefore a possibility.
Things may happen much quicker than we normally expect, such is the urgency and pressure to protect national interests.
VIS - many many thanks for the feedback and your views and take home feelings.
With such demand building ( on a dial from 0-10 I think the actual pressure is currently around 2-3 as most factories still need to be built in Europe, however it is so much quicker to build a factory rather than waiting for mining or chemical processing which is what brine extraction is , it is not mining ). There is a way to go yet for the real pressure on the majors to get it right and quickly.
My two pennies.
1 - As I have said before on here lithium brines will come to market quicker than we think as globally the tech chemical companies mirror eachother. The processes being used by Standard Lithium brine extraction will be learned and they are talking modular and licencing out the tech with Bayer Chemicals in Germany via Laxness pulling the strings.
I am 99% sure lithium brine will be the major success talked about years ago via S America BUT now the tech has developed so fast we are looking at 24 hour production to LCE. Super fast and way way more carbon friendly than open strip and even more than underground costly mining.
2 - Can you see Shell, BP, EXXON or any major oil/gas company buying up a ready made brine operation ?
Imho it is very likely to happen not necessarily CUSN/CUSL when it gets spun off next year, but one ,two or three will be tested or just bought out aggressively. Any thoughts ?
Still a very strong buy here for the Tin & Copper too.
Re point 1 on 18.55 original post. I was struck yesterday when someone- probably Darryn Quayle- displayed a map of Europe showing where all the giga factories ( for EV batteries) are going to be built. The comment was that at present there is no lithium supply for them. Whether that refrerred only to European supply I do not know, but the point was that Lithium production needs to explode to keep up. And at present Li production is a huge consumer of energy and is very pollutive. This means there is huge pressure on CL and British Lithium to produce Lithium as fast as possible with the UK Government very firmly backing the effort.
It's definitely an exciting time!
CK I did not hear any timescales on Carnkie, but I did hear there is going to be another public consultation early November at Twelveheads. I hadn't picked this up before. Must be worth a visit!. I think it might be the 2nd of Nov, but do confirm with the company well beforehand if you intend to look in as it may be the 4th. Apologies, lots to take in / remember today.
Here is bullet point 6 of p 152 of the Net Zero doc. published today, which if seen through, will have major implications for the Cornish Miners and their production.....
===> Build a globally competitive zero emission vehicle supply chain and ensure our
automotive sector is at the forefront of the transition to net zero.
Thanks VII, did they give any timescales on Carnkie?
9n a slightly different but related note, it could be interesting to see what todays news on heat pumps does for Kensa in truro
1.We saw a number of graphs which showed what is going to happen to demand and supply of strategic materials, tin and Lithium etc
The important thing is that supply will not keep up with the expected demand, even allowing for better recycling, more mines coming on stream and working existing assets harder. The gap between possible supply and expected demand is going to be very significant in a few years time. The only conclusion has to be that materials will have to be "rationed by price"
My conclusion was that although what we are seeing now may just be a blip due to supply chains being disrupted, it is however a foretaste of a huge supply deficit to come. There is going to be a rush to get these materials - without them industries will not be able to compete. The dreams of tin at $100,000 per tonne now seem quite plausible in a few years time possible sooner.
2. The second key take-away, Is that the government realises the importance of security of supply. We were told that the automotive fund can apply to copper and tin producers. So they can apply for grants and other funding. Studies are underway to see if smelting can be brought to the UK. Again, HMG seems to be behind this effort and surprisingly may be considering helping with finance. A complete vertical chain of activity is sought. Mine to car. The net zero report published today may have more details. See LLinv post below 15.25 today for link
3.My third takeaway, is that given the huge growth prospects both in volume and price /value, is likely to lead to massive rises in cash flow for mining companies. Whilst funds are needed to get going, the companies will quickly become very large and rapidly growing, cash generators . Stock Market valuations are likely to expand massively. Furthermore, there will be huge pressure to bring the metals on stream as fast as possible. So the stock market is not going to have to wait as long as has been the case in the past for results/payback.
CUSN, CL, TW, SML are sat in the middle of this, literally, an automotive revolution. For those of us rooting for jobs and economic revival in Cornwall, the news could hardly get better.