Member Info for Iaintittle

Sorry, big thumbs.
Wriggle off an EU charge of fraud in exchange for ‘allowing’ Cínovec to remain in European hands whilst one of our ‘investors’ will be a mysterious Slovakian fund..... two birds, one stone, right Cinovec, get on with it, you have Babis’s blessing, full steam ahead.

Babis wants two things, to get off the fraud charges and to get a slice of Cínovec for himself. The EU realises that it must back European development of a battery supply chain or else risk being held to hostage by the Far Eastern manufacturers. The EU knows that the investment required is huge. The Far East has the cash. The Germans are desperate to protect their automotive and engineering industries but their two major banks are practically bust. There is colossal private wealth in Central Europe especially Germany and Switzerland. Me thinks that Babis will wriggle off an EU. Barge of fraud

Hi Graham, i agree with all you say;
In terms of the fund raises, again I agree, I have taken part in the last 3 or 4, but the most recent seems to be unnecessary...... do you want to PM me on iain@65bls.com Happy to discuss after the weekend, I have lots of thoughts that I would not like to put on the BB

Nice to see Robin back, I hope you are well, and I am happy to endorse his comments about Fingers...... a few of us around here are a bit rough around the edges, so be it, but don’t underestimate the knowledge or the commitment..... some understand the geology, some are close to management, some do endless research, some are closer to the politics ...... there are many good voices on this BB ... let’s raise a glass to the prospects that bought us here in the first place as they are closer than ever.

Is anyone reading this as I am?
EBU as announced by VW (https://www.marke****ch.com/press-release/germany-volkswagen-charges-ahead-with-eu-battery-alliance-2019-03-22) sounds like it is a very different entity to EBA...... VW announce that they are the only car manufacturer involved (there are definitely a few in the EBA) and that they will be applying for German State assistance. This sounds very different from the more political EBA and much more commercial insofar as they announce that they are the only automotive. Taken a step further it could also be seen as a resource grab ie VW are saying, get involved with us now and we will bring Govt funding and EU Lithium to the table but we want to learn your expertise so we can make our own batteries in the future if we need to. Resource grab for German Zinnwald or CR Cinovec??? Either way this potentially lights the blue touch paper.

A few points Rsitup...... Firstly, renewables will really come into their own when battery storage becomes widely available at $150 kWh or less. (Tesla currently say they are around $120 and aiming for sub $100 within 18 months) This means that energy supply curves can be smoothed out..... aka ‘what use are renewables when the wind doesn’t always blow/sun doesn’t shine when you need electricity........ make it, store it, use it when needed.’
China have recently cancelled the construction of around 150 coal fired power stations, some of which were half built..... they have realised that fossil fuels are killing their people, they are very active in making renewables work...... moving their populous to electric vehicles and supporting that with coal fired electricity generation is counter productive and they know it; their aim is to clean up their air pollution.
Suggestions that batteries are not recyclable is rubbish. Initially, when an E/V battery falls below 90% rechargability (circa 10 years of life) the unit will change use to a domestic storage unit where ‘range’ is not an issue as it will be connected to a localised recharge source (wind/solar panel/grid)..... eventually, when its efficacy drops further the component parts can be recycled...... remember, one of the biggest driving forces is renewability, batteries are being designed to be recycled.

I appreciate that your post was a while ago, are you still in CVR medical?

Unless he has an impostor he was alive and kicking at the weekend........

Ford accelerates electric vehicle investment https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-47644323

And, from memory Lawrence, the old PFS was for just 10% of our resource and based on a single 8 hour shift per day..... any movement on these parameters would shift the IRR significantly.

I hope he can reach the meat on the ceiling....... otherwise the steaks will be too high.....

What if, CTW, the hydroxide results were so good that they were best kept quiet until some formal progress had been made with the CR Govt?

MY COMMENTS IN CAPITALS TO DISTINGUISH, NOT MEANING TO SHOUT! The mine is almost certainly cash flow negative. WHY????They were producing 30koz per month, this was at costs in the region of $1,200/oz. PRODUCTION WAS AT CIRCA $800 OZ..So we can put costs of running the mine and company at $12M per month. CAN WE? WRONG COST PRICE WRONG ASSUMPTION Costs will have remained around this level but revenue will have dropped. WRONG COST Didn't the broker forecast 10-20koz for q4. So the mine could be $12M cf negative of even $24M in one quarter. WRONG The radio silence is quite bizarre. I guess they are having a good laugh about the shareholders they have screwed over. OR PERHAPS THEY ARE MAKING SURE THAT THE INFO THEY RELEASE IS ACCURATE AND MAY PROVIDE GUIDANCE FOR THE FUTURE? ME THINKS YOU HAVE HEARD A RUMOUR THAT A POSSITIVE RNS IS ON THE WAY AND WANT TO GET IN CHEAP TODAY..... AND YOU TALK ABOUT HAVING A LAUGH ABOUT SHAREHOLDERS THAT ARE BEING SCREWED OVER??!!??

The graph below might suggest that uptake will be quicker. https://mr-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/2015/12/Technology-Adoption111111.png

Sorry apart two cont...... There is so much at stake here for all the players that I can only see a JV with a global battery manufacturer in conjunction with two major offtake agreements for 80% of our production .........can’t wait!!

Part 2 BATTERY GRADE; it is not what is in the 99.5% carbonate or hydroxide that matters, this portion is pure, it is the content of the 0.5% residual that matters as this has a huge impact on battery performance and life...... and, just as importantly, the costs associated with the removal of unwanted elements that influence pricing. From memory the brines contain unwanted Calcium Sulphates and Magnesium and spodumene contains Iron that are all costly to remove. I understand that we have Sodium and Fluoride and bench process has found them easy and cheap to remove. PRODUCTION OF BATTERY GRADE; We have arrived where we are by accident. In the first instance (20 yrs ago) low % concentrate Lithium was shipped to China and the Far East for processing to supply demand from, what was then, a small scale electronics industry. The costs of removing the impurities were high but the added value was huge when only using a couple of grams in a phone or 12 in a laptop. A medium sized fully electric car now needs in the region of 35-40kgs of Lithium carbonate to function....... this requires a seed change in the industry. It is no longer efficient to ship vast quantities of 6% concentrate. It is no surprise that there aren’t any battery grade processors at mine side because we have arrived here by accident. Last years numbers for carbonate/hydroxide production were circa 200,000 tons. At US$10kpt that is a global market of US$2bn..... hardly enough to move the needle and, when the cost of building a processing plant for 40,000tpa is circa US$400m, or, in other words, an upfront cost of US$10k per ton output just to build the plant, there is hardly an incentive....... unless you believe that demand is going up, prices are going up and that you can produce at a low enough cost to still be profitable if future price increases do not materialise. Either which way it will take fear or bravery to back the building of a new mine and processing unit...... and we have seen plenty of that from the Chinese, the Koreans are now responding and we, in Europe, are just waking up..... guarantee your supply or be at the mercy of your suppliers. LME; the fundamental problem with trading battery grade hydroxide and carbonate on any market is ‘standardising’ the residual impurities. For example. It is understandable why a production line making a specific vehicle would only want a battery module supplied by one supplier who had sourced its Lithium feedstock from one certified source..... so take the VW group for example; promising 20 or so models (not variants) within the next 2 years across Its VW, Audi, Skoda and Seat brands; yes it wants more than one supplier of feedstock/battery modules but would it buy 50 or 100 tons on the LME? Or might it prefer to partner with a specialist processor that guarantees identical residual chemistry no matter what the feedstock? There is so much at stake here for all the players that I can only see a JV with a global batt

Part 1 Great post Earache and very stimulating. If I may, having had numerous chats with PS, KM and KC over the last 2 1/2 years let me put a bit more flesh on the bone. The S American ABC triangle (Argentina, Bolivia, Chile) is blessed with huge Salar deposits of Lithium, However; 1/ They are found in some of the driest deserts in the world and require vast quantities of water to flush out the Lithium in bribes before the water is lost through evaporation. 2/ If the small quantities of water that do exist are used in this way there is less for the local populations and wildlife. 3/ It can take a number of years for the water to evaporate from a pond; recent ‘El Nino’ rains set production back 6 months in some parts. Moves are afoot to develop new technologies to speed up the process and re-use the water but this is early stage and will increase costs. The production of current volumes is highly political so the expectation of vastly increased volumes in the near future should be tempered. Bolivia has the largest known ‘resource’ but the lowest production and shows no sign of putting mining ahead of people and wildlife. Australia has no such restrictions and many hard rock deposits across the vast state of WA and so can build mines with relative ease and therefore can expand production quickly.

Do you think so? Why not the MM's dropping the price cos they are short of shares and/or have a chunky order to fill?

Not China, Korea.

In the transition from a combustion engine led ‘motor’ vehicle into an electric powered vehicle Tesla is years ahead of the traditional automotives...... the Silicon Valley techies are also miles ahead. Within 5 years vehicles will be computers on wheels and the traditional automotive manufacture and support industries will be decimated.