Gordon Stein, CFO of CleanTech Lithium, explains why CTL acquired the 23 Laguna Verde licenses. Watch the video here.
Pdub - note even Delivery Duty Paid the buyer is likely to have paid or end up paying the import duties. As an exporter myself I am not going to cut my prices to a customer in La La land just because their government decides they don't like the stuff I make - instead the customer has to cover the charges. If they cannot be bothered to deal with their own customs authority and want me to do it then bill them later I am likely to not only add their import duties on top but also a processing and import handling fee just to teach them a lesson.
perkylad - you might wish to worry about the safety issues of running megwatts of power into a large battery containing many hundreds of tonnes of high temperature molten calcium
I had not seen before (not one of the Afritin personal employee videos, which to be frank, add nothing and get less than 50 views)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Qmu63apOLw
Mikinaman - I assume that we gave you the link to the Invinity project that couples a VRFB into a hydrogen production system.
https://invinity.com/flow_battery_plus_tidal_green_hydrogen_orkney/
from the Presentations earlier this year:-
" Both lithium and tantalum already mined with globally significant resources within the same ore body (zero additional mining costs)
Lithium
450 kt of Li20 @ 0.63% grade
Lithium market continues to be buoyed by the Li-battery market
Tantalum
6,091t of tantalum
Every 20 tonnes of tin concentrate = one tonne of tantalum concentrate
Used in capacitors, tantalum chemicals, alloy additives,sputtering targets, mill products and cemented carbides
Plant design targets:
Sn recoveries >60% at concentrate grades of 60% Sn
Ta recoveries >15% at a concentrate grade of 22% Ta
Li recoveries >28% at a concentrate grade of 4% Li2O "
To understand these concentrate grades you have to appreciate the following
100% pure cassiterite (Sn2O5) is only 78.7% Sn by weight hence 60% Sn is >75% pure cassiterite
The tantalum is in the form of a tantalite ore which has the formal formula of (Mn,Fe)(Ta,Nb)2O6 - hence the amount of Ta contained can depend on the amount of Mn, Fe and Nb that is also present. The average price paid for Tantalum ores like this last year was $158 per Kg of Ta2O5 contained ( https://pubs.usgs.gov/periodicals/mcs2021/mcs2021-tantalum.pdf ). The terms of the offtake agreement mean that Afritin will get this value minus $2.2 per Kg of Ta2O5 ( https://www.sharecast.com/news/aim-bulletin/afritin-extends-uis-offtake-deal-signs-new-tantalum-agreement--7814120.html )
22% Ta corresponds to 27% TA2O5 by weight of the ore
The Lithium is in the form of petalite. Pure petalite is 4.87% Li2O by mass ( https://digitalfire.com/material/petalite ) hence 4% Li2O is >82% pure petalite.
You need to appreciate these numbers to understand how seemingly low concentrate grades actually correspond to very good quality outputs.
meanreverter - as everyone already here knows the Lithium (and the Tantalum) ARE going to be produced as a low cost by-product of the normal Tin production process, which by the way is already making profit. Hence the production costs of the lithium and the Tantalum are essentially zero.
The pattern of trades towards the end of trading on friday is interesting - there seem to be a group of largish sells but with each one being covered by a large sale, though not of identical size so are unlikely to just be rollovers (also the spread of 15.20 to 15.30 is I think too large for typical rollovers).
This suggests to me that someone is building a long position - I wonder if they know, or suspect, that the test results on lithium co-product results are going to be out soon ?