RE: Lithium Zim11 Jun 2023 11:48
Liquid,
Not seen any broker report that says the certificate will be issued Monday but we were expecting it last week. It turns out the whole department was at an away day week in Bulawayo for a internal mining conference and so it didn't get issued, unless they picked it up late ish Friday. The problem with these things is that promises are made by third parties and then things don't necessarily happen. IMHO it is close but who knows? Something else could delay it. Eventually all of these things time out.
My current understanding is that the buyer turns up, samples what you have for sale and then comes back a few days later with the price to pick it up. So if first sales are Monday, then ALR should get paid by Friday.
Each truck takes 20 tonnes and so they will need a few trucks or a few trips to shift the stockpiles: I don't see it all being shifted day one because of the physicality. It might take 3/4 days to shift the stockpiles.
Yep the stockpile belongs to ALR and so it can be sold as soon as they have the EIA certificate.
On the total size of the deposit, no one really knows as yet. There is an internal ALR estimate but until some drilling is done it is a guess (a large guess though). From ALR's sampling and what the local police say about the stockpiles it looks like the grade is very good but there will be areas of high grade and areas of lower grade, it won't be uniform. The purpose of any drilling will be to identify the areas of high and low grade. I see no point in preparing a JORC since we don't intend to list ALR merely to distribute the cashflows as and when they arise.
Yep the rule about the minimum grade for export has changed from 4.5% to 3%. ALR should be able to get to 3% without beneficiating, just a bit of grading.
https://www.reuters.com/markets/commodities/zimbabwe-presses-miners-produce-battery-grade-lithium-locally-2023-05-31/
"Last year, Zimbabwe banned the export of unprocessed lithium ore to stop rampant digging and smuggling of the mineral by artisanal miners, ordering that only lithium concentrates could be exported."
There are no restrictions on selling ungraded or processed lithium in Zimbabwe, it is only for export that we need to meet a minimum grade.
The updated export rules are in SI 57 2023 published 8th May 2023.
https://www.law.co.zw/download/statutory-instrument-57-of-2023/
As always, handing to do a bit of reading....
DYOR
PS one thing that did come from a senior geologist from a company we have an NDA with is as follows: spodumene at surface tends to be weathered and at a lower grade than deeper down. What we are mining is at surface and so, all other things being equal, we would expect better grade deeper down but until we drill.......who knows?