Member Info for Hogsnipe

Found this at:
https://www.africanmining.co.za/2022/10/18/pensana-responds-to-calls-for-independent-ree-supply-chain/

While Pensana’s magnet metal oxide production is an important step it still leaves the final step of magnet production with others. China dominates magnet production but there are signs that this will change with a number of companies planning to establish magnet manufacturing in Europe and North America. British automotive and aerospace components business GKN Limited has recently announced its intention to produce permanent magnets in Europe and North America.

Also found this at:
https://www.gknpm.com/en/news-and-media/news-releases/2022/gkn-powder-metallurgy-enters-permanent-magnets-for-electric-vehicles-market/

LONDON, 19 JULY 2022 - GKN Powder Metallurgy (GKN PM), the world’s leading provider of powder metal solutions, today announced its commitment to enter the permanent magnets for the electric vehicle (EV) market, in response to the supply challenges the industry is facing.

Diego Laurent, Chief Executive Officer (CEO) at GKN Powder Metallurgy
Automakers are looking for a reliable, local supply. We aim to have in place the capacity for up to 4,000 tonnes of permanent magnets by 2024, which will see us become a key player in driving the future of the electric mobility market.”

Underpinning the move into the permanent magnets for EV market is GKN PM’s business-wide commitment to sustainability. With ambitious environmental targets in place, including achieving net zero greenhouse gas emissions in all operations worldwide by 2050, the company is contributing to a more responsible and sustainable future for all.

Maybe with magnet companies in Germany and US, GKN could be the undisclosed MoU partner?

Although there's nothing new in it, this is still worth a watch:
https://www.fdiintelligence.com/content/feature/the-uks-postbrexit-dream-of-independence-81562
Scroll down to "Dreams of Resilience" then click "ENTER"

Pensana supplied this link if you want to see the text of PA's commentary which went out on the recently broadcast BBC Radio4 series on Rare Earths:

https://pensana.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/BBC_Radio_4_The_Scramble_for_Rare_Earths_Full_Transcript.pdf

A consortium led by US (Boston) private equity firm Bain Capital with partners Japan Industrial Partners and Japan Industrial Solutions (both Tokyo-based private equity companies) has agreed to acquire all of the shares of Hitachi Metals Ltd (HML) in a deal worth $7.5bn. 53% of HML shares are owned by the parent company Hitachi, and the remaining 47% are in minority shareholder hands.

This is a crucial development in world RE magnet metals markets. HML has over 31,000 patent applications and grants, and holds controlling/unbreakable patents and IP regarding rare earth (neo) magnet technology and production processes. If a RE magnet manufacturer anywhere in the world is not granted HML patent licenses , the whole of the US and Japan will not buy from them, under pain of lawsuits.

China itself had to seek licensing from HML to sell Chinese-made magnets to either country. Despite a previous court case brought against HML in China for "anti-monopoly" law violations, China's antitrust regulator recently (Sep 16) gave go-ahead approval to the Bain consortium HML buyout.

So all of HML's patents, patent applications and IP are passing into non-Chinese private company hands, led by a prominent US company. The implications for any future UK and European magnet manufacturing startups are profound. I'm sure Pensana will now have to set up early close working relationships with this consortium if it expects to hit the ground running with its magnet metals manufacturing plans at Saltend. These three private equity companies will no doubt proceed to snap-up the very best emerging non-Chinese RE magnet 'unicorn' manufacturers for their portfolios. They will also have very effective means to hobble the rest......
All IMHO - do your own research....

SmartPunter - there is a Japanese connection with the Lofdal RE project /deposits in Namibia. Namibia Critical Metals hooked up with Japan's JOGMEC (Japan Oil, Gas and Metals National Corporation - a Japan Government body) in Apr 2020 - securing limited fianancing of further exploration and development of Lofdal, and a potential offtake agreement. See here:

https://www.miningreview.com/speciality-minerals/namibia-critical-metals-japanese-breakthrough-for-lofdal/

Lofdal has been dragging on for years now but is still stuck in preliminary stages of development.

I can't find any specific involvement of Hitachi Metals in Namibia though.

tiger100 - agree about the wording - looks like there is a chunk of dropped text somewhere.
I received a subscriber news email about the MoU from Pensana this am with exactly the same wording, so it does originate from them. Interestingly, their email to me is headed by a new simulated photo of the Saltend FEED plant as per the latest Wood design. Unlike many recent simulated plant photos in the press, this one is actually set at the new Reedmere site, not the original swamp site. Have a look at it here:

https://imgur.com/a/V6lnkJD

Look's like they've photoshopped in the area of Saltend due south from Reedmere - Saltend Power Sation cooling/transmission towers dominate the skyline.
Hope people don't get the impression from this photo that the plant is already built....
If anyone on this board lives within hailing distance of Saltend/Reedmere it would be interesting to know how far ground work has really progressed at Reedmere?
The wording of the annoucement from Pensana about the MoU offers quite a few clues who the partner might be:
"significant step forward in our goal of providing an independent and sustainable supply of rare earth magnets"
"It is also an important step in finalising the financing for the project."
"a significant industry partner across the globe"
"a strategic relationship with a major non-Chinese industry player"
Back in May, Business Live reported:
"Discussions are underway for half to be taken by an Asian magnet manufacturer, with a potential further 30 per cent to be marketed by a major trading house"

Building on these straws, particularly the emphasis on magnet metals (as opposed to NdPr raw materials), and Asian but not Chinese, it could be Hitachi Metals/Japan - they have the metals/magnet manufacturing/technology. Hitachi Metals are now being bought up by Bain Capital, a huge Boston-based private investment outfit with very deep pockets, so there could well be some glimmer of hope for Pensana financing there too.
This is all IMHO so do your own research. This is entirely my speculation, not offered as investment advice or proven information.

"Piggy "- are you serious? Is the second para of your last comment directed at me?

I meant Radio 4 not BBC 4.

Tony - just listened to PA on today's BBC4 episode - The Super Magnets.
Interesting use of the present tense from 7mins in re: Longonjo:
PA states "we are mining" - "we mine the top 25 to 30 metres" - "we process that to a high value raw material"
Misha Glenny follows this by saying re: Pensana - "they send the sulphate on to Saltend"

Intentional or not, the vast majority of listeners in the UK will now believe that Pensana is currently mining and concentrating REs Longonjo and shipping the refined mixed RE sulphate to Saltend.

In my book that's sailing far too close to the wind for comfort by all parties involved.

Tiny trading volume today. Bots have given up. SP is stuck fast - but hey, guess what - ordinary investorsare still buying.

So Paul - how's that strategy of getting rid of us private minnow-investors in readiness to feather the nests of your big fat corporate investors going?
Love to hear from you...

Theorist - thanks for your considered opinions. To take just one point - "nothing" following PRE's Great Wall financing announcement in Jul 2020 - Pensana finally knocked that on the head in the Times (Nov 12 2021) wh printed a correction to a published article: "Pensana, the company responsible for the project in question, has asked us to make clear that it has no partnership with any Chinese companies in Angola or elsewhere. We are happy to correct the record"

PA gave several interviews back-pedalling the Great Wall line as early as Nov 2020 (just 4 months after the Great Wall announcement) - eg with Investors Chronicle (Nov & Dec 2020) saying:
'Pensana is still considering its mine funding source'.
Pensana chairman Paul Atherley told us the financing terms offered by China Great Wall Industry Corporation were attractive, but the company would have to be careful of the deals it signed. Mr Atherley said, 'Is there then the possibility that China or the Chinese have some form of control over where the rare earths go? That's where we are, as a company, where we've got to be very careful and see whether we want to go down that track'.

I hate to quote the Rare Earth Observer but they were on the case by Jan 2021:

'Pensana, who are exploring Angola’s Longonjo, recently changed their concept from shipping rare earth concentrate to China to creating a Lynas clone, i.e. concentrating the raw material in Angola and shipping the concentrate off to a processing facility in Yorkshire, UK, to separate rare earth oxides there'.

In summary, PA has many years of first-hand experience of business dealing with China. Why would he want to make a public show about a change of mind on the merits of China financing, via a formal company announcement to shareholders, if this could be just as well done in a low key fashion, without overt criticism of China's human rights and ecological crimes? Not to mention the probability that Great Wall stipulated a guarantor for the upfront finance, which would have to come from the Angolan Government, who probably also appreciated the low-key exit.

Investor's Chronicle posed the question: "Why would the government of Xi Jinping – through a state-owned enterprise – pay for a project sending a strategic resource to the UK and Europe?" It was kind of obvious from the day Pensana's UK RE refinery at Humberside was mooted, the Great Wall heads of agreement was dead in the water.

SInce mid-August the MVIS Global Rare Earths/Critical Metals index is down a full 16%, the FTSE 350 Mining Index also dropped 8.5% - but Pensana has fared rather worse at 30% down. Share trading in that period has been pretty thin and ragged, and Pensana's share register breakdown has hardly moved an inch since August. Looks like investors are sitting tight.
So, given the recent positive news on the Angolan deposits, I think the MMs are guilty of over-egging the pudding - and I decided to buy in again today, averaging down to 98p.

What baffles me about the down-rampers on this board, is their conviction that sane business people would go to the lengths that the Pensana board has gone, just to build an entirely fake and bogus operation, doomed from the start to failure and collapse?

It just beggars belief that anyone can seriously promote the argument that all the leg-work done over the last two years - technical, recruitment, engineering, supply chain, planning, site acquisition, environmental, organsational, government relations, etc, etc was just smoke and mirrors - to what end for God's sake?

OK the chancellor's fixes may not have been received as well as they could be, but inflation is probably now past its peak anyway, and these fixes are designed to attract investment quickly - particularly in the North and Humberside - plus the overdone devaluation of the £, means investment opportunities in the UK are at bargain-basement prices.

The Lassonde curve 'doldrums' zone has just about run it's course IMHO - we'll soon see if the down-rampers are out of runway....

Toney - here's the link:

Deloitte report summer 2022 on IPO's and new london listings here:
https://www2.deloitte.com/content/dam/Deloitte/uk/Documents/corporate-finance/deloitte-uk-ecm-update-summer-2022.pdf

Extract:

Following the exceptional year that was 2021, IPO markets globally have largely ground to a halt in the first half of 2022, in the context of significant macroeconomic and geopolitical uncertainty. There have also been declines
in all major global stock market indices since the start of the year, with tech stock valuations particularly impacted. Major macroeconomic factors include the impacts of surging inflation rates, interest rate increases and supply chain challenges, together with concerns of recession. This was
exacerbated by the on-set of the geopolitical situation in the Ukraine in H122, and the second half of 2022 could see further disruption from Prime Minister change in the UK and the mid-term elections in the US.

2021 was a successful year for IPOs on the London Stock Exchange, with 126 companies raising over £16.9bn. 2022 thus far has seen 38 new issues across the Main Market and AIM raising just £629m. Unlike 2021, the listings did not include many household names, with the majority of London listings
being funds or SPACs.

They believe investors will continue to be reticent of new listings until 2023

See FT article here:
https://www.ft.com/content/e1255bdd-098f-4b74-9759-bc8d48071031
Belgian group Solvay are financing major investment in their French La Rochelle plant to create the second REE metals refinery in Europe (after Pensana or do they mean Neo in Estonia??) to reduce China dependency for these critical minerals. The plant will be upgraded to process 17 RE metals but specifically for magnet metals neodymium and praseodymium oxide refining.
Under the proposed EU Critical Raw Materials Act, permitting will be streamlined, funding will be allocated to strategic projects and strategic stockpiles of materials will be built. Europe uses 16,000 tons of RE magnets yearly, 98% of which are China-supplied.
I thought the UK was supposed to be nimbler/more agile after Brexit in beefing up its critical supply chains - but here's Belgium and the EU stealing a March on us....

News of a £4M grant to Birmingham University SusMagPro project to build a factory for recycling REE from electronic device permanent magnets:
https://resource.co/article/new-rare-earth-metals-recycling-plant-open-birmingham

Why are we seeing investment in "small magnet recycling" when there's soon going to be scores of 7ton ex-wind turbine permanent neomagnets needing large-scale processing as older wind nacelles reach their end-of-life?

Come on PA - carpe diem!

And LSE can't count either, so the chopped last para should have read:

So my message for Truss, Kwarteng and Rees-Mogg is - the clock is fast ticking down to - oops....too late.

And you can't have the word r-a-c-i-s-t either....

Well done LSE - the name of a well-known country (P-A-K-I-S-T-A-N) gets filtered because of ****** content to ****stan. Couldn't make it up could you?

Tony - thanks for feedback. Yes, demographic changes must be a big driver for radical rethink in elderly care and one of the key ways will be automation one way or another - robots, AI, remote diagnostics and health monitoring & disease prevention will all be forerunners of the future here.

However, these do tend to pale into insignificance in the face of climate warming.

In the greater scene, the UK's total contribution to preventing major warming is trivial, even if we do get to zero carbon by 2050, whereas China, US and India and EU will actually have determined our fate long before that.

Recent flooding (following an unprecedented droughts which devastated crops) in China was on a such a scale as to affect its 2022 GDP, ****stan is 1/3rd under water, US and Australia suffer huge and growing wildfire storms and also flooding with extreme weather events, as do EU countries (German floods followed by the Rhine emptying), etc.

This seems to have brought about a simultaneous realisation by the world's greatest polluters that they cannot escape the consequences of their methods of energy extraction.

Trouble is, they all now have the same choice of options - nuclear, wind, sun and sea. As an ex-nuclear industry employee, I favour the first, but unfortunately it's not capable of delivering the solution - current tech is too unwieldy and uninvestable for most nations (and I include the UK here) and new nuclear technology (fusion, mini-reactors) is unproven and some way off yet.

So everyone is going to have to invest in wind, solar or sea power and ways of storing it, and all at the same time.

China aims to double its offshore wind power, adding 328GW capacity by 2025 - needing anything between 60,000 and 220,000 tonnes of NdPr oxide depending on turbine size. Recently, China stated it sees no reason why it should continue to be the world's supplier of choice for magnet materials. China's EV replacement programme is on a similar epic scale. And that's just China...

Supply chains overstretched? - they are going to fracture completely in the next 8 years.
Before that - a Godalmighty scramble buy up the means of extraction and refining of critical minerals by every country in the developed world and developing countries with raw resources.

Just witness how much of the world's lithium supply chain is already being commandeered by China, and the success of Belt & Road in bankrupting chunks of critical infrastructure in Africa. Not to mention the dodgy wisdom of depending on non-aligned countries (Russia - ouch!) in a crunch.

For all the talk of cooperation between the US/Europe as partners in establishing shared and sustainable/secure supply chains for critical minerals, I fear it's going to quickly turn out to be a dog-eat-dog contest, an 'every man for himself' market - the stakes are just too high/urgent to avoid this.

So my message for Truss, Kwarteng and Rees-Mogg is - the clock is fast ticking down t

Interesting to see that Pensana was apparently "invited" to present their hydrogen decrepitation magnet recycling plans to Equinor's board. See:

https://energynews.biz/equinor-and-pensana-to-study-wind-turbine-recycling-with-hydrogen/

Equinor have their own venture capital arm (Equinor Ventures) with US$750million to spend in 5 years. They aim to provide venture capital and project-based funding of early-phase ideas and ambitious growth companies. Their equity investment portfolio currently comprises 50+ companies:

https://www.equinor.com/energy/ventures

It is already invested in KoBold Metals, who have REE and other mining activities. KoBold has partnerships with Rio Tinto and BHP and joint ventures with mine operators and exploration. Equinor are also invested in Lithium de France, as well as having a strong commitment to Saltend Energy Park, and low-carbon energy supply to Pensana's proposed refinery.

Early days, but Equinor taking the initiative on proactive discussions with Pensana may hold some promise for direct equity investment?