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As the news release says 'Results of the metallurgical test-work programme are a key deliverable in support of the Pre-Feasibility Study'

I agree. Met work often gets overlooked but its very important. No use having lots of spodumene if you can't process it! Always disappointing to see a muted share-price response but I'm not surprised. Retail rarely trades much on met work. Industry / institutions will read the report in time.

In my opinion, yesterday's RNS was huge progress!

Great podcast Troajan, thanks.

I like the bit at 34 minutes when talking about the lithium market he says something like:

'There is new supply coming online, and there's quite a lot of supply coming to market, at least over the next few years, but it's like filling up a bathtub whose bottom just keeps getting deeper and deeper as you're doing it, because we're playing against such an exponentially increasing demand curve! It's playing catch-up.'

Thanks Teddy for the Ricca video,

The video is from the May 9-10 conference and Len says 'in the next month, all going well, we'll be putting our first drill holes into Dorothe'. So, hopefully they've started drilling there. The new CVI prospect in Liberia also looks interesting. '2 rigs on site currently and look to be drilling over the next month'. So, both Dorothe and CVI prospect COULD be being drilled NOW. I'm looking forward to results!

Len and the board (I think the same board as Atlantic Lithium) look busy to me!

On Atlantic Lithium, based on the exploration updates, there should be 1 x diamond rig, 3 x RC rigs and 6 x auger rigs now active. Full steam ahead! Each day gets us closer to the Pre-Feasability Study (PFS) and then the Definitive Feasibility Study (DFS)!

Great drilling update this week. The apparent widening of the pegmatite, at depth, below parts of the Ewoyaa Main deposit is fantastic. I'm looking forward to seeing the assay results AND looking forward to seeing them punch a few more holes below the two 80m intervals (GRC0669 and GRC0670). Let's see how wide this gets. The location of the question marks on page 4 of the news release (see right hand image) is where things get really interesting!

Grasscutter North also looking promising.

And then on the new tenement they've finished the geophysical survey AND the geochemistry survey on the soil, which hopefully should help guide where to position the drill rigs.

All good progress, in my opinion!

It's a good question ceejay101. I'd guess an update could come at any time......

In the meantime, roll on the PFS and an exploration update.....

These were Elon Musk's comments on the Q1 2022 Tesla earnings call. I think this took place on 20 April 2022:

'However, you still need to dig up the ore, dig up basically the [spodumene 00:41:54] or whatever, the clay with the lithium, and then you need to go through a whole series of refinement steps. And that's a lot of industrial equipment that's needed to go to refine lithium or to lithium that can be used as lithium hydroxide or lithium carbonate in the battery cell. So we think we're going to need to help the industry on this front, but I mean the industry is growing fast and I certainly encourage entrepreneurs out there who are looking for opportunities to get into the lithium business. The lithium margins right now are practically software margins. I mean Zach, correct me if I'm wrong, but I think we're seeing cases where the spot lithium price is 10 times higher than the cost of extraction. So we're talking 90% margins here. Can more people please get into the lithium business? Do you like minting money? Well, the lithium business is for you.'

I've been thinking about this recent auction (Pilbara Minerals) of spodumene and the USD5,650 per tonne bid for 5.5% concentrate. This implies US6,160 per tonne for 6% con. which is what ALL intends to produce.

I went back to the RNS on 7 Dec 2021 - scoping study update. ALL used US$900 per tonne for 6.0% con. in the financial model, which generated a post tax NPV of US$789m. Then in the CASH FLOW SENSITIVITIES section (there are no page numbers on the RNS unfortunately, but about page 20-ish) it says 'Project cash flows were most sensitive to changes in concentrate selling price where a 5% drop in price resulted in a greater than 20% change to the post-tax NPV. This was closely followed by the sensitivity to changes in recovery or grade.'

These things usually go both ways. IE. a 5% INCREASE in price would also likely result in a 20% INCREASE in post tax NPV.

So, what happens to the post tax NPV when you put a 584% price increase through the financial model?

swest42 / Teddy -KGB2, yup, I check far too often too. I'm up to the gills in this stock, so its hard not to keep an eye on things.

Separately, I saw a post on LinkedIn saying that Pilbara Minerals held a digital auction for 5000 tonnes of 5.5% spodumene and received a USD5,650/tonne bid. I'm hoping this gets confirmed by Pilbara Minerals tomorrow with a news release. Let's just put this in perspective. Didn't Atlantic do their scoping study at US$950 per tonne?

Hi ILOVElithium,

I don't mind people posting about other companies. It's interesting to understand about other companies to compare with ALL. But personally, I don't plan to invest in PREM. I believe their main lithium asset is in Zimbabwe. I came across this article on Zimbabwe as a mining destination:

https://www.newsday.co.zw/2022/04/zimbabwe-ranked-the-least-attractive-country-for-mining-investments/

Separately, Poindexter10. I agree with you on the options. I'm disappointed to see such a low bar set.

cyfalafwr, I understand why you (and others) have taken a broader approach to your lithium portfolio. It'll be interesting to see what Elon Musk does upstream. He's not been shy to throw the money around for Twitter! Time will tell in the lithium space if he picks up an egg or two! lol. He seems to understand the supply problem.

Goolang, I wish you and Bradda Head luck with the drilling on the hard-rock project. It appears too early stage for me to invest but I'll keep an eye on drill results. A discussion on the merits of ESG would be more meaningful, if and when a resource is in place. Also, currently most lithium hydroxide convertor capacity is located in the east (not yet in the west) and 50% of ALL's spodumene concentrate remains unencumbered with an off-take agreement. We currently don't know who will buy this or what direction this will travel. EV markets are growing globally.

Nonetheless, I hope BHL find a large lithium deposit.

Is there a resource on the spodumene? Happy to be corrected.

Some people get irritated when others post the names of other lithium companies on this board. I don't mind when people do this, it's important that I compare my investment to other companies.

Bradda Head Lithium (BHL) is mentioned now and again. I've had a look and BHL seem to have a few projects but only Basin East appears to have a resource yet. This is 17.7Mt of Indicated Resource at 912 ppm (parts per million) Li. If we convert this to percent then 912 ppm is 0.0912%. If we then convert this to LiO2, multiply by 2.153 = 0.196%. Let's round up to 0.2%. Now we can compare this to Atlantic Lithium's Ewoyaa, where the INDICATED ONLY resource (this way we can compare apples with apples) is 20 Mt at 1.29% LiO2. Atlantic's LiO2 grade is 6.5 times higher.

There's another important point. Lithium deposits are NOT all the same. BHL's Basin East project is what's known as a sedimentary lithium asset. I don't believe there is a sedimentary lithium asset in production today. Bacanora's Sonora will be the first.

This article ( https://tinyurl.com/3mb6bm8z ) says the following about Bacanora's Sonora project - ignore the stuff about drug cartels etc ;

'Clay lithium deposits such as Sonora are "unconventional" lithium resources that lack cost-competitive mining technologies compared to mainstream lithium mining, such as salt brine extraction, BloombergNEF analyst Sharon Mustri told S&P Global Market Intelligence. "It's not proven yet that it will be economic, that the process will extract lithium in the way they're planning in their flowsheets."

Personally, I'm not interested in lithium clay projects nor am I interested in brine projects. But I wish BHL and their shareholders well and I really don't mind people mentioning the company's name on this board.

My interest is in high-grade, hard-rock pegmatite projects with simple-processing, low-capex and huge exploration potential.

I haven't found anything better than Atlantic Lithium yet.

Atlantic Lithium's exploration potential is enormous, in my opinion. Liontown Resources (LTR) in Australia has a market cap of A$3.79billion (£2.17b). They have a hard rock, lithium project called Kathleen Valley with 156Mt at 1.4% LiO2. A big resource. It's mostly underground whereas our project currently is open pit. Kathleen Valley also requires flotation to process the ore which is why their capex is much, much larger.

The Kathleen Valley DFS says 'twenty lithium mineralised pegmatites have been identified at the Kathleen Valley Project which extend from surface TO A DEPTH OF 640M.'

At Atlantic Lithium, we've been quite rightly focussing on an open pit project at Ewoyaa to get things going but our recent news release on March 24 says 'Mineralisation remains OPEN AT DEPTH and ALONG STRIKE with additional untested pegmatites within the immediate deposit area, providing confidence for further resource upgrades.' and 'Drilling at the deposit extends to a VERTICAL DEPTH OF APPROXIMATELY 319M and the mineralisation was modelled from surface to a depth of approximately 330m below surface.'

Drilling at Ewoyaa to 640m, like Liontown, is unlikely to be a priority since Atlantic will be focused on getting the open pit into production but for me, drilling to 640m would likely be an easy way to target an increase in the resource size.

The thing is, I think we have too many other interesting targets at or near surface before we need to contemplate going underground. Our resource could grow and grow. In my opinion, it's simply a function of time to do the drilling. I take comfort from the fact that we have 6 auger drills and 1 RC drill currently spinning at Ewoyaa. I'm looking forward to the next exploration report.

Good progress today.

I think it's interesting that Len Kolff spent 16 years with Rio Tinto.

This article was released in January and is mostly about copper but mentions Rio Tinto and lithium:

https://tinyurl.com/ycyy5fms

Rio Tinto also have the Jadar lithium project in Serbia.

PS eyesblue, good to hear you got the all clear!

Core Lithium +11.6% on good exploration results.

Their market cap is now AUD2.6bln. (£1.5BILLION).

Read across to ATLANTIC LITHIUM and our exploration potential?

Atlantic's exploration potential does seem considerable.

They have 1 RC rig and 6 Auger drill rigs active on site. The auger rigs are cheap but will be very useful at locating where to drill with the more expensive RC (Reverse Circulation) rig. (For those not familiar with an Auger drill, they look like a big corkscrew!).

I'm expecting a high success rate with the RC drilling, as the augers will have done all the hard work.

Have a look at page 12 of the presentation and the turquoise auger drill dots, showing where the augers have drilled.

Look at all the turquoise dots in the Grasscutter north target corridor, for example. Seems like plenty of drilling there. It'll be interesting to see what the RC reports.

The 17 March RNS said 'Exploration RC drilling designed to test several new targets defined in auger drilling within the Ewoyaa pegmatite corridor, to the north and south of the current MRE'

I doubt they'd bother drilling there if the auger didn't show anything. And the auger has drilled a lot at Grasscutter.

Looks to me like this resource has a long way to go.

7 drill rigs should help!

JL,

Many thanks for your response. And I agree with your comment on my discount being a little low. You are right, the studies will reduce the risk. I just took 30% as a simplified Friday evening guess at the discount. And this is an important issue. ie. the risk reduction as the studies are done. Well done to Core Lithium for their market cap and the stage of their project. Hopefully Atlantic can follow the same path. Their project seems quite similar. If things progress similarly, then the market cap COULD well follow suit. Time will tell.

Again, thanks for the discussion. And I agree, the fact that the Ewoyaa funding is taken care of, is a big deal. How refreshing not to be braced for a capital raise to fund the project.

Best, 9b

Great progress today!

On valuation, CORE LITHIUM seems to have a similar spodumene project to ATLANTIC LITHIUM and has a market cap of AUD2.08BILLION which is £1.19BILLION. ATLANTIC LITHIUM has a market cap of £272m

CORE LITHIUM own 100% of their project and have a resource of 14.7Million Tonnes at 1.32%. ATLANTIC LITHIUM have 30.1 Mt at 1.26%.

CORE LITHIUM plan to produce 175k tpa annually on average. ATLANTIC LITHIUM plan to produce 300ktpa.

CORE LITHIUM own 100% of their project and ATLANTIC LITHIUM own 50%. So I think of ATLANTIC LITHIUM getting 150ktpa of production for their 50%. This is about 85% of CORE's production, so perhaps we should have only 85% of their market cap? Which would be 85% x £1.19bln = £1.01BILLION.

CORE LITHIUM are ahead as far as first production. They're in construction and 1st production Q4 22. So perhaps another deduction is appropriate. If we take a 30% deduction then £1.01BILLION * 0.7 = £707MILLION.

ATLANTIC LITHIUM's market cap closed at £272MILLION today.

I still see further upside.

These are just my thoughts and keen to hear other peoples thoughts?

Glengarth,

Thanks for highlighting the Piedmont announcement.

I find paragraph two of Piedmont's announcement interesting.

'Additionally, the net proceeds may be used to fund possible strategic initiatives and for general corporate purposes.'

https://app.sharelinktechnologies.com/announcement/asx/50fe7da99cf57e839f35a3beb5fe2172

The drill results announced 10 Feb released the final drill results from the c 37,500m drilling programme completed in December 2021.

And then Vincent Mascolo (RIP) commented:

'The results reported herewith represent the final drilling results for the programme completed in December 2021, where the Company is targeting >80% resource conversion from inferred to indicated over the 21.3Mt @ 1.31% Li2O JORC Resource, as well as a targeted tonnage increase to over 24Mt in support of a 12-year mine life for future studies.'