Member Info for Hogsnipe

Well, sorry to disappoint you but here's the low-down:
- there will be no new Government funding announcements, just much hot air and chest-beating about world-beating UK net-zero initiatives to enable, encourage, promote, stimulate, attract, and generally be really upbeat about our increasingly dire performance and prospects, but not actually spend any money.
- the main reason for Green Thursday is because, last year the High Court ruled that the Government's net-zero strategy was simply unlawful, because it failed to show how the UK will actually achieve the legally-binding carbon targets it sets. Today is part of HMG's response.
- there'll be no statement from Badenoch detailing where the all jobs and investment will go, she's still busy working on here "Advanced Manufacturing Plan" which has been brought forward to "the coming months", so that's alright then...
- chancellor Hunt, has already poured water on any incentive action today, having said in the last Budget that our response to the US IRA would be presented in his Autumn Statement (yawn...)
- Chris Skidmore MP's Net Zero Review Report made 129 recommendations involving planning reform, energy efficient homes, business incentives for decarbonisation investment, tax incentives, and infrastructure investment. Green Thursday is HMG's official response.

HMG has a self-made Everest to climb if it thinks increasing corporation tax and removing capital investment reliefs and extorting windfall taxation and punitive taxes on the wealthy are "pro-investment". The great UK disinvestment is already underway and picking up pace with every day that passes. Decision makers will look very critically at Green Thursday hoping to find reasons why UK Ltd is still worth investing in. If they don't see them today, they will simply up sticks and go where the returns are easier.

The Critical Minerals Assoc (CMA) has released a new report 21 Mar 2023: 'Midstream Processing and Refining: Unlocking Security of Supply’:

https://www.criticalmineral.org/_files/ugd/5caeff_58f8a2c396e241219aa4b108e6c705db.pdf

Pensana, Tees Valley Lithium, LCM, Akemy and dozens more companies make up the membership of CMA, so you'd expect their vested interests to figure largely in the report, which they do - including 'Case Studies' from Pensana and TVL.

However, this is quite a significant report in the way it pulls no punches on the shortcomings of UK Government.

Some extracts:
---------------------------------------
The UK Government does not have a specific critical minerals fund akin to those of Australia, Canada,
and the US, and lacks policy attractiveness such as that created by the Mineral Security Act (MSA) and the
Inflation Reduction Act (IRA).

Several of the UK’s domestic critical minerals projects have been progressing despite the lack of UK Government support. With government support, these projects could be significantly accelerated.

The UK Government must commit significant capital, and establish critical minerals partnerships with
allied nations, to secure the UK’s future and bolster the nation’s economic resilience. The alternative
is to do nothing – jeopardising the future green economy, and the UK’s economic prosperity.

There is a strong case for urgent government intervention to support the industry and secure the UK’s
future. There is still a misconception amongst policymakers who are wedded to market forces. In reality,
the midstream industry for critical minerals is heavily monopolised which distorts the market in the
dominant player’s favour. There is no free market for many critical minerals. If the UK Government is
serious about protecting its industry and growing a circular economy founded on a just energy transition,
then it must step in and support its companies.

If the UK Government does not propose its own counter measures to the IRA, and any future policies by the EU, it
will effectively take itself out of the race to secure critical minerals.
---------------------------------

HMG have now updated the UK's Critical Minerals Strategy (as of Mar 13):
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/uk-critical-mineral-strategy/resilience-for-the-future-the-uks-critical-minerals-strategy
- but it's is still devoid of any major new initiatives for investment financing support on a par with those of US and Europe, so I guess the message is falling on deaf (or tin) ears. Or maybe departed ears - the preamble is signed:
The Rt Hon Kwasi Kwarteng
Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy..... - has anybody told Kemi Badenoch?

RareEarther - agree 100% on the fiasco HMG is making re: EV and battery industry in UK.
More on US subsidies:
To break the dominance and reduce dependence on China in mining and processing rare earth minerals, the US formed a global alliance called the Mineral Security Partnership (MSP) in 2022.

Jose Fernandez, the State Department's undersecretary for economic growth, energy and the environment, wants the MSP to keep ESG at the forefront. MSP partners – Australia, Canada, Finland, France, Germany, Japan, the Republic of Korea, Sweden, the United Kingdom, the United States, and the European Commission – are committed to building robust, responsible critical mineral supply chains to support economic prosperity and climate objectives.

Mike Biddle, Executive Director for Net Zero at Innovate UK has said:
"Now is the time to build UK capability and a sustainable supply of rare earth elements, working with international partners. The rising costs of energy has demonstrated the importance of resilient global supply chains. It is because of these global challenges that the government will refresh the delivery approach of the UK’s Critical Minerals Strategy, which will be published later in 2023".

Fernandez disclosed that each MSP partner submitted development projects in 2022 that their countries/companies were interested in pursuing. "We received about 180. We then have narrowed those down to 16 pilot projects that are now being evaluated by the project working group on the basis of the investment climate, the need for the mineral, and also the potential for investment. Those 16 projects go from mining projects*, to processing projects* to recycling*. Recycling is a major aspect of what we're trying to do in the critical minerals space. Once we select the projects that we can all agree should be pursued, we will then go to our companies and try to attract investments and financing or offtake agreements".

He warned African mining nations not to miss out on this potential bonanza. To help them avoid doing so, the MSP aims to ensure its miners maintain high ESG standards and invest all along the supply chain so that African countries derive the greatest benefit.

Pensana fits all three of the pilot-project categories above* and is on the ball in Angola too, but US needs watching - any creep of "Buy America" further than US transport/highways threatens EU and UK investment in and manufacturing of RE products, as does "US Reshoring".

Disappointing is the news from Innovate UK that all the UK appears to be doing is trying to knock out a Critical Minerals Strategy sometime "later in 2023". Every other developed country did this years ago - as ever the UK is p*ss*ng away it's time on planning, strategy and unecessary duplication to be finally ready for the battle some time after the war is over.

Just get chatGPT AI Bot to write the UK strategy - done and dusted in about 15 mins and probably just as good...

RareEarther - many thanks for your positive contribution - you've restored my motivation to follow LSE posts again.
Couple of questions - Portugal domiciled subsidiary? I missed that.
Also - did you do the webinar from PA on 28 Feb - I've looked for an online replay but not found it? Reference to Hamilton and Engineer rang an old bell with me - what was that about?

RareEarther - if you were in Joe Biden's position, with a wad the size of a planet burning a hole in your wallet - which would you rather do:
- try to secure your supply chain by striking some sort of an investment deal with a middleman who may or may not sometime build a factory to supply you, or - just buy the mine and supply the US directly right away?

Theorist - it's here:
https://pensana.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/Pensana-Plc-BMO-Presentation-February-2023.pdf

Nothing relating to Coola, and nothing new at all apart from register updates and addition of recent Pensana news items already announced.
Financing statements:
"Working with financiers to finalise funding arrangements
Immediate commencement of main construction on finance"

As predicted bots+day traders are back in force. Opening B/O spread of 4.9p - then hammered by AT trades before lunch with100K+sells, no effect on bid, but spread squeezed by 50%, followed by concentrated buying after a nice lunch - 150K in one set of buys at 13:18. Pond life in a stagnant pond.

sirmark/Tony - or it could be yet another pump-and-dump run on the bots/day traders 6/7 week cycle which has been ongoing for quite a while now - since the last meaningful news from Pensana I'd say....

SmartPunter - keep trying - you kow that's very old news and was shown the door here on LSE in Aug 2022. Kalvig retracted and Hardy was put in his place directly by PA - see posts around Aug 3 -5 2022.
China posted this on 3 Aug 222:
The MiMa REE report, announced this morning, provides incorrect and harmful information regarding the funding of the Longonjo project. Consequently, we have withdrawn the report; republishing is pending awaiting adequate editing. As a research organization, our aim is to provide the best possible, objective, and transparent data as possible. We sincerely appologize to Pensana, and the readers, for not checking the background data sufficiently.
Per Kalvig

... must try harder SP.....

Theo - dammit - you made me laugh, but I bought some fluorite mining stock just to be safe.

Eloro - as Churchill paraphrased Santayana 'Those who fail to learn from history are condemned to repeat it'. Research is one way to learn from your mistakes. You choose your own way if you have a better one.
Valuation-It-Is - thanks for the research. CLIMATES program is another £15M small-beer round of research funding for academics with a never-ending round of Innovate UK-led applications leading to small grants, so HMG can look like they are being pro-active and doing something useful without putting in any real money or effort. If history is anything to go by, most of the money will go to U of Birmingham/HyproMag/LCM and cronies.

As an aside, Alison Saxby is probably tuning into PRE on LSE daily now to see how her rise to chat-room fame is going.
So - seeing as you're reading this Alison - how about giving Pensana's private investors (remember us?) a long-awaited update from Pensana on the state of financing/funding/investment progress and what ABG Sundal Collier have acheived?

I agree that the political/defence arena over the coming year will favour RE metals demand, but the elephant in the room is UK inward investment and what HMG is doing to ensure its early death.
The UK now stands alone as a major economy which is failing on all fronts to encourage investment through a centrally- funded program of import controls, subsidies and favourable tax treatment of high-tech investment.
The EU has a massive $1trillion Green Deal/SEIP programme over the next decade to subsidise its industrial and tech development and bring supply chains in-house.
The US now has an equally huge $500bn Inflation Reduction Act, with the bulk of that going into energy, transport and EV programmes to bring supply chains/industries back home.
China, as ever, continues it's onward march with huge state-subsidisation of its industry and protectionism and market manipulation across the world.
Unless the UK gets it's act together in the next year it's going to be completely crushed by the majors and become a country which doesn't even merit a first consideration whether it's worth investing in.
The lithium battery megafactory fiasco is the latest fine example. The only one we've got in UK is owned by China and it's not even a megafactory and Nissan needs more than 100% of it. We laughably thought TESLA was going to build the world's biggest lithium megafactory here in UK. That decision rapidly went to the Berlin-Brandenburg factory in Germany because of far more favourable investment factors in Europe. Now Musk is pulling the plug on Europe completely and he's going to build the factory in Nevada - thanks to Uncle Joes's inflation-busting tax incentives.
Meanwhile we had British Volt - don't panic Mr Mannering....
Shortly, we in the UK are about to increase corporation tax, abandon incentives like the capital gains super-deduction, let the EU get away with screwing us out of the Horizon project, mess about with higher-rate taxes/non-domicile rules to make sure no well-paid executive will ever want to set foot here again, and continue to squander huge sums on lunacies like HS2.

As a Pensana investor I want to see the company get the investment it deserves and soon, but in the present UK environment, under this government, it's becoming a very long shot.

A Forbes item here:
https://www-forbesafricalusofona-com.translate.goog/lista-de-minerais-criticos-de-angola-sera-revisada-a-cada-cinco-anos-diz-ministro/?_x_tr_sl=auto&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=en-GB

Key points - Pensana gets a mention, but he also wants to attract in new SA and Canadian players.
He said - 'Angola will also require that a significant part of the value chain for these minerals be developed in the country'.
So a plus for Pensana/Longonjo pre-processing there.
On rare earth mining he says: "the start of production of neodymium and praseodymium, used in the manufacture of batteries for electric cars, as well as copper and niobium, is planned for the coming years. This means that Angola can make a big leap in terms of mining critical minerals in the next five years"
More implied support for Longonjo there.
Concluding, the article says:
"The major companies in this sector such as AngloAmerican, Rio Tinto, Ivanhoe and De Beers and exploration juniors such as Tyranna Resources and Pensana are active and operating in the Angolan mining sector. However, he made it known that more junior companies from Canada and South Africa are still being sought to work in the Angolan market".

This from an obscure source (and translated by Google):
https://www-economiaemercado-co-ao.translate.goog/artigo/eua-vai-prestar-assistencia-a-empresa-quedesenvolve-projecto-de-terras-raras-no-pais?_x_tr_sl=pt&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=en&_x_tr_pto=sc

Jose Fernandez, US Assistant Secretary of State for Energy and Environment has said that his country will provide assistance to the company that develops the Rare Earths Project in Angola. The Angola rare earths project is located in Longonjo, Huambo province, and is developed by the Australian company Pensana.

The discussion took place at a side-meeting with Angola's Ministry of Mineral Resources, Oil and Gas (Mirempet) at Mining Indaba 2023. During the meeting, issues related to the US Government's strategy for supporting African countries, including Angola, with regard to critical minerals for energy transition were addressed.

The American official also said that the United States of America would assist Angola in terms of investment for prospecting and exploring critical minerals.

Tony - I like MarketScreener charts - have a look here:
https://www.marketscreener.com/quote/stock/PENSANA-PLC-109347695/charts/
The Expert Dynamic Chart shows all of the SMA 20/50/100 upticking nicely since mid-Jan. You can add a large number of your preferred chart measures too.
Free signup gives you more options and less annoying popups/usage limits - well worth it.

Join the dots:
BV receivers have awarded the winning rescue bidder to an Australian outfit - Recharge Industries - currently working closely with the Oz govt on its lithium battery gigafactory programme (don't you wish the UK had one of those?).

Recharge Industries is a portfolio company of an interesting Aus/US based partnership called 'Scale Facilitation'.

Recharge Industries has MoU's (https://www.rechargeindustries.com/post/recharge-industries-signs-mou-with-tees-valley-lithium-to-supply-lithium-hydroxide-1) with Alkemy (PA's Saltend side hustle - aka Tees Valley Lithium) to work together to jointly source lithium spodumene to be used in TVL’s refinery in Port Hedland, Western Australia for conversion to lithium sulphate to be shipped to Teesside, UK for conversion into lithium hydroxide.

Scale Facilitation is funded to work bilaterally with Recharge Industries to bring together research, advanced manufacturing, capital, supply chains and talent. This outfit (https://www.scalefacilitation.com/) registered the trademark: "A Company that Creates Companies", and offers business financing services; business brokerage services; and financial consulting services. It is basically an investment firm with a novel approach de-risking projects by empowering innovators to maintain focus on their craft and facilitating the many critical services and capabilities required to deliver large-scale advanced manufacturing and innovation projects.
SF focus on building partnerships with large superannuation funds - who are very demanding due diligence/ESG compliance investors. SF do this by applying a standardised investment appraisal method to "de-risk" the whole chain of building companies from initial concept, through pilot/scaling projects to large scale production. SF clain to understand and meet the needs of large investment funds for ESG and Regulatory compliance within a tightly managed risk/return framework.

SF in New York in conjunction with Recharge Industries have succeeded in initial funding and getting the construction of a gigafactory underway in Geelong, Australia,New York.

Part of their mission statement reads: 'Scale Facilitation® removes the many barriers to commercialization for innovators by giving access to the right strategic partners and collaborators who will adopt and scale their invention'.

Join the dots...

Mumbles. It's arithmetic not statistics.
Yes, an increase from say 1% to 2% would be a massive 100% increase - but it's nevertheless diddly-squat in real terms.
If you like statistics - here's some for you:
UK rail freight volume (tonne-kilometers) actually fell from 22bn tonne-kilometers in in 2006 to 15.2bn in 2020 (see coal below).
UK GDP increased from £1.63trillion in 2000 to £2.05trillion in 2020 - true, but 80% of UK GDP is services (not a lot of rail freight in insurance, financial services, tourism, etc, etc) and less than 20% is manufacturing/industry - and it's slowly falling year on year.
Not a lot of coal trains now.....

Smartpunter - if you're talking about freight capacity:
In 1998 the UK volume of freight moved by rail was about 7% and by 2016 it was 12% - a pathetic growth rate of 0.2% a year.
Network Rail's own forecast is that rail freight could grow by around 30% by 2035 if sufficient capacity were made available.
So that's a target of 15.6% reached in 13 years time - the same pathetic growth rate of 0.2%
Even if HS2 does release capacity for freight - where's the payback when demand is at a virtual standstill?
If you're talking about passenger demand - post COVID work patterns and technology advances in remote working make it very doubtful that rail passenger demand will ever recover, let alone expand.

HS2 costs are nothing short of astronomical - just say it - one hundred and fify six thousand thousand thousand £!

How anybody can imagine HS2 is more beneficial than building say 350 spanking new hospitals, I do not know.

Here's some simple arithmetic for the brainless numpties in HMG/BEIS who are obviously having a bit of a struggle grasping the difference between millions and billions:

Inflation + escalating construction costs have completely hammered the economic case for HS2.
It's now going to cost £156BN (ONS estimate) - that's £452M per mile for 345 miles of high-speed track.

Total capital expenditure on the dual-continent Pensana/Longonjo rare earths supply-chain operation has meanwhile been reduced from £401.9M to £378.1M in 2022.

Unbelievably - HS2 will cost HMG the same as 412 Pensana/Longonjo's or 41 battery gigafactories (RIP British Volt - cheap at a mere £3.8BN).

And all to save a few minutes from London to Birmingham/N West, while the trains will still be half-empty (unless HMG works out how to unwind WFH), and probably strikebound, and the extra freight trains won't happen at all because the UK doesn't manufacture much anymore.

For God's sake Rishi extract your digit....

Sundrum - the press release for Grant Shapps deal with Saudi states:
"The UK and Saudi Arabia will explore working together to open up new sources of critical mineral supply. That could mean promoting the UK's world leading manufacturing and mining finance sectors for Saudi investment, or exploring new opportunities for UK mining firms to do business in Saudi Arabia". Not really pure speculation then....

Re: HMG/Grant Shapps recent announcements of closer financial involvement of Saudi Arabia in UK critical minerals/rare earth supply chains - may not be entirely good news.

The latest announcement of Saudi investment in lithium refining, see here:
https://www.miningweekly.com/article/european-lithium-signs-mou-for-saudi-arabia-plant-2023-01-13
which says offtake from the Austrian Wolfsberg lithium mine will be processed in a new refinery to be built in Saudi, rings a few alarm bells.

Could be there's an economic case for Longonjo output being switched to in Saudi Arabia for refining not Saltend- on the grounds of abundant cheap energy, and Saudi's willingness to use its SWF to diversify away from their dying fossil fuel economy. Above announcement also has implications for Teesside Lithium's future customer base.