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Rpks: not wishing to shoot the messenger but that article has some of the most inaccurate statistics regarding Lithium usage I have ever seen, not withstanding it says that we have a Chinese Lithium Deposit......
‘ Currently, approximately 150g of lithium is needed to produce 1kW / h of power.
Depending on performance and technological progress in this area, it is expected that between 3-10 kg of lithium will be needed for each electric vehicle.
As a result, analysts expect annual lithium demand to grow by 21% worldwide.’
Utter tosh..... articles such as this do us no favours.

I still think the elephant in the room is the German portion of The Cinovec ore body currently owned by Bacanora/Solarworld. KC always said that the cost of production was much higher than Cinovec because the tungsten/tin credits are way less. Even so, much higher than $4,000 is say $6,000 ..... still very viable for local supply. We must not forget that Lithium hydroxide is not safe to transport long distances ( and it loses its chemical integrity; you need to ship carbonate and have local conversion to hydroxide = secondary plant = $$$$) ....... I would
Love it to come under our ownership.

So, first things first, this is the Tesla battery day presentation from Tuesday.... 'accelerating the time to sustainable energy'
'Terawatt is the new gigawatt.'
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=del35OVFKMM
And this is the Benchmark Mineral discussion 'reaction to Tesla battery day'
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JuuBt9ScUuE

Both are around 90- minutes long.
The very brief upshot is that Tesla think that they can cut current battery costs by 50%+ and are forecasting producing 3 Terawatts of batteries (combined grid and ev) by 2030. This is a staggering 15x Benchmarks estimation......

As we all thought, this revolution will be huge. Happy viewing.

In all our excitement about Cínovec we must not forget about the continuation of our resource geology across the border in Germany. Can’t remember precisely who owns it but some combination of Bacanora, Solar World and perhaps Gangfeng..... whilst production costs a little higher than Cinovec it is still very viable. It does, however, in the spirit of European cooperation on environmental issues, make little sense building two plants...... just one enormous one please!

Twitter message from Elon yesterday;
‘We intend to increase, not reduce battery cell purchases from Panasonic, LG & CATL (possibly other partners too). However, even with our cell suppliers going at maximum speed, we still foresee significant shortages in 2022 & beyond unless we also take action ourselves.’

I agree, there is little doubt that the oilers now want to get their own slice of renewables I just don’t think they will change their aversion to risk.... having said that, with all the Euro money sloshing about maybe they can risk other people’s cash.

Thing is Noise, it is very rare for any of these ‘big’ comoanies To get involved in anything that they perceive to be risky, they would rather buy EMH for $10bn in 5 years time when it has been in revenue for 2 years than pay $1bn now, they just don’t take those risks. Even CEZ has invested in a third party entity rather than take it in house. Likewise the resource that someone mentioned, never developed in house but maybe spun out as a project, interesting idea.

https://www.benchmarkminerals.com/events/battery-day-2020/
Forgive me Fingers but it is Wednesday 23rd Sept for most of the globe!

Noise, Fingers is the expert on this, he keeps a spreadsheet, hopefully he will chime in with answers but from what I can remember CEZ want around 40ktpa for two gigafactories that they have planned (I grilled KC about this at the agm in relation to whether they would get a priority price). I think the InoBat number is in addition to this. I think that there is a small deal with H3DA, but the biggie will be Northvolt..... VW are getting their heads around the seismic shift in mindset that is needed when no longer being in complete control of your biggest and most critical supplier but instead being in a long term mutually beneficial JV.
And then there are the rest of the companies operating in Europe wanting local Lithium supply...... I can’t remember in which interview with KC that this occurred but there is one from the last 2 months where KC is asked something like ‘of the potential off takers in Europe including automotives and battery makers who are you talking to’ and the answer is ‘all of then’.....

Just to add to the good comments by enteleon and fingers and others as to why EMH is under radar/valued. The automotives have realised that they have to invest in their supply chains if they are to secure good Lithium batteries for their EV’s. This means JV’s with Battery makers and off takes with producers. The chemistry of the Lithium (especially the residual 0.5% in Battery grade 99.5% Lithium) is vital for the life efficacy of the
battery, it must be consistent over time, so the automotives have to get into bed with their suppliers. Add into the mix that building a 25ktpa mine/plant costs $500m ...... plus the political and environmental will and you have quite a few jigsaw prices which all have to fit together to build the picture.
Automotives, Battery makers, Lithium mines, Finance, political will, environmental will ..... a heady concoction, but when the announcement comes and reads something like ‘CEZ/EMH announce a mine/plant to produce 120kt LCE pa. With three offtake agreements each for 40ktpa (CEZ, Northvolt, A N Other). The mine will be funded by a mixture of EU grants and subsidised loans coupled with commercial lending from a consortium of European banks underwritten by the offtaker agreements and the EU govt’
....... I don’t think that we are too far from hearing such an announcement..... and when we do, this will really fly!

Noise, a couple of points if I may. Firstly the Rio’s Jadar project; this has a fundamental problem for Rio. If they develop this mine they will produce massive amounts of borates. This will
compromise the global borate market, in which Rio is a leader, a market which I believe to be worth in excess of $20bn,
Lithium will not reach this level for 10 years. Developing Jadar shoots Rio in the foot.
Second point is the Aussies and the Chinese...... during the recent drop in Spod concentrate price some of the Chinese reneged and renegotiated the contract price previously agreed. This has not gone down well in Oz. Initially some mines cut production and investment but more recently they have been looking for other solutions to ‘over supply’ such as, do your own processing or find new off takers....... things aren’t all rosy in the Aus Chinese garden.

It might be ‘done and dusted’ in principal but as Howard Klein said recently, if all the projects that use lithium and are scheduled to come on stream in 2023 are matched with the global production due to be on stream in 2023 they will all get, on average, 15% of what they require....... big pinch point coming and the last thing you want is politicians in charge of business.

If European governments, banks and businesses don’t take the chance to invest in projects like Cínovec you can bet that the Chinese will. The question is, is Europe prepared to hand the opportunity to the Chinese? Politically they don’t want to but if there is no urgent investment then the Koreans and Chinese will snap up the resource.

Call it a draw please fellas ....... we have all suffered enough with EMH over the years and now that there appears to be light at the end of the tunnel lets not all fall out.
Much of Europe has returned from holidays now and I expect to see several bits of catalytic news over the next 8 weeks...... here's to hoping!

Tsibis; perhaps someone asked a third party how they would respond to LTInvestors comments and when the answer came back (in the same group email I received) the two of them posted it at the same time..... simples. In fact 5 people were copied into that email so there could have been even more split personalities!!!

Nice try tsibis. The text came from an email that I was also copied into so I could have posted it as well........

The Lithium Battery was first invented in 1985. It took 30 years to get its cost to around $200 kWh and then a further 5 years to $100 (where it isn’t estimated to be, for some, now). At $1000 Lithium batteries only had niche applications. At anything less than $150 they are mainstream and the investment in them rockets. Tesla are a couple of years ahead of the pack, they have bought tech companies to incorporate their patents (Maxwell) and are now said to be looking at nanowire tech (Amprius) to improve density. The 4 limiting factors of Lithium batteries (range, price, charge time and access to chargers) are all improving rapidly as the investment bears fruit. As others have said, the current investment into Lithium will see it being the lead modality for the next generation at least.

One or two people on this board know who fingers is....... whilst he is fat and ugly enough to defend himself, I will say this for him, he may be brash, he may be over enthusiastic at times but he is very close to management and he is an important share holder.

My guess is that Brookstone, Falmer and Key Ventures own 10p warrants due to expire next month. Between them they own ~48% of the company. Their opinion of the path forward will be aligned to that of the company. I can’t see them exercising the warrant and selling as this would drive the price lower than 10p. I cant see them letting the warrant lapse when the price is 12p. I believe that there will be more news before the warrants lapse, it is in the companies interest to get the cash from the warrants in order to accelerate the drill program and get us to productions as early as possible. These shares are tightly held, if the 3 sh’s mentioned above wanted to up their holding it would drive the sp up if they bought in the market ...... yes some warrant holders will sell but I doubt it will be them. My guess 15-18p end Sept.

A huge percentage of the warrants are owned by the big shareholders, I can’t see them selling.