The latest Investing Matters Podcast with Jean Roche, Co-Manager of Schroder UK Mid Cap Investment Trust has just been released. Listen here.
Leading Australian pilot scaling facilities: Achieve process optimisation with CSIRO
While you may not have the ability to do this on your own, collaborating with organisations that have appropriate pilot scale facilities, or have the capability of designing and constructing them, is the first step to being able to achieve successful process optimisation and competitive advantages.
CSIRO have extensive experience in designing and operating pilot facilities for a range of applications and currently possesses the most developed set up for mineral processing piloting in Australia.
Our team have been involved in successful pilot scale testing across a range of processes, including:
fluid flow
electrowinning
hydrometallurgical operations including leaching and filtration, and
pyrometallurgical operations including roasting and calcining
Our scientific and technical staff have a high degree of engineering understanding; which in turn gives CSIRO multi-disciplinary capability to design and operate novel pilot scale facilities.
We also have the capability to use these studies to further assist operations with validating models for more rapid process optimisation in the future.
If you’re looking to successfully achieve process optimisation through pilot scale testing, CSIRO – through our research, breakthrough science and world class facilities – is uniquely positioned to add value to your operation.
Thanks ML
Yes and as SB said in his crux interview.
“A Cornerstone investor” or partner.
GLA
Errrr did not read the word UNIQUE
I will be very interesting which process works with EEE titanium mineral sandstone which is unique:
There are
KROLL
Hunter
Tivan +
TiRO
The Australia government is obviously environmentally conscious, thus looking at even better ways to look after its top tier mining industry.
Just not sure which one will work the best, just yet.
GLA
Good luck to them trying to mine in their long winters.
Winters in the republic are long and cold, and the summers, while short, are quite warm.
Average January temperature: −17 °C (1 °F) (southern parts) to −20 °C (−4 °F) (northern parts)
Average July temperature: 11 °C (52 °F) (northern parts) to 15 °C (59 °F) (southern parts)
Lowest recorded temperature: −58.1 °C (−72.6 °F)
That ground is going to be hard.
Empire Metals* (EEE LN) 11.42p, Mkt Cap £65m – Shares soar as investors await drill results
(Empire holds 70% of Pitfield, Century Minerals, which is run by two geologists holds the other 30%.
One of these geologists works for Empire.)
• Empire Metals shares continue to rise as investors await assay results from the Reverse
Circulation campaign.
• The team had drilled 18 out of a planned 40 holes by 29th November
• The best intercepts from the first two holes drilled showed higher-grade titanium
mineralisation:
o 297.1m @ 6.1% TiO2 from 111.4m.
o 173m @ 5.76% TiO2 from 18.6m.
• While it is not known if the titanium will be of value, the sheer scale of the higher-grade
titanium is exceptional from a geological perspective.
Conclusion: The large, sedimentary-hosted hydrothermal nature of the system at Pitfield
indicates a chance for the discovery of alternative mineralised deposits on the project, including
potential for copper, gold and nickel.
*SP Angel acts as nomad and broker to Em
AGEOS,
Sundays will never be the same without your incredible informative posts.
Thank you
Looking forward to you calling for the main man to appear.
Bits missed as along message, best seen on telegram
So what am doing now as a broker? I’m just about to hire an extra person just focus on CTL. They will look at every other lithium company and revue all the major funds and cross reference, so I can they call and arrange pitch on CTL, we will reviewing every other lithium company seeing which analysts cover them and trying to increase the research cover. We will do a review of all the press articles on peer companies, lithium and DLE and start to help get CTL, Steve and Also more coverage. I have pretty much nailed my colours to the wall here. 92% of the investors are FDC’s base while some fund many are close friends and indeed family. I have been limited in being able to market because we all thought the ASX listing was weeks away and other advisers did not want to market heavily ahead of a potential raise. I’m free to do my bit.
What can everyone here do. Everyone here is a shareholder, everyone here can agree the long term outlook for lithium and EV’s really strong, everyone can agree we have a great asset and a great management team, we all agree the market sucks and the price is unbelievably cheap. We need everyone to invite 10 friends to this group, we need people to send an email to 10 friends just saying I own this stock, I think it interesting and really good value you might want to take a look or join the telegram. If everyone did think and 1 in 10 brought stock we would double the number of people in this group, and we would be back over 40. Funds buy in placing and eventually exit. Investors here set the price, private individuals buying and selling on market. We have a couple hundred, we add a couple hundred more we go up. 23 years of broking small cap mining and I have learnt that until you get to production the best companies don’t always get funded or trade and those that get funded and trade are not always the best companies, its marketing and getting investors. I think it is really hard to see a scenario where there is much downside risk form here, so please do send the ticker and this group link to as many people you know who may invest or be interested to here the story.
I get to spend a lot of time with Aldo and he is genuinely very committed to equality and fairness. He is passionate about the local community in Chile, and he very passionate about doing the right thing for the companies’ shareholders.
With Steve, I have known him around 10 years and I suggested him to Aldo as Chairman when we first met almost 3 years ago. Previously I had raised money for Euroepan Lithium, I ended up on the board briefly to represent some shareholders, Steve was CEO. He doesn’t promote it but Steve’s PhD is in Hydro metallurgy. He is really smart guy. This is basically DLE. We are not a really a mining company. The exploration is more like junior oil, the extraction is more like a chemicals company and the process is all chemistry. Steve is the best guy for this. We have the resource. We nee
So if we step back, as someone said the company was in-between a rock and hard place. Sadly the general market sell led to an across the board decline, people talk about debt, debt will be their to build a plant leading to revenue, on one provides debt pre revenue and the company would be crazy to take debt pre revenue. A Strategic will come for construction or once we have the pilot plant and they can test our lithium.
So we started last week, we had good support from funds, Regal stood there corner, JCAM who many here deride has exited down to around 2% up in the 60’s have been in at 20 and 30, and 47 and they ivested for 10%. Rab, Miton, Terra Capital, L1, Hardon, all supported, many of the initial individual shareholders from the IPO averaged down.
Before people start railing again, any person or fund is here to make a return, and everyone too, some are looking for 50% some 100% some multiple that is a market, I have a long term view of 2-3 years with CTL. Some funds will sell on the way back up, that is a market, there is group here sometime that wants to demonise institutions but without them nothing gets funded.
In a perfect world I would have loved 4/5 funds a few million each but so many have a nothing below £50m cut off and we now fell below that, so the institutional audience is limited today. We had £6m orders from institutions and HNW’s, mostly current shareholders. We then had to reach out to the wealth managers and private client brokers. The issue was this was 121 mining conference in London. There are about 8 mining company out looking for cash and cash is king and the only was to get to the min was to agree on the discount and warrants. Initially the offers were around 20 pence. Several funds stepped up and gave ooders at 22 pence with a half warrant. The final book was over £10m . FDC raised over 90%. We gave funds and existing sharedholders. 100% of their orders and cut all PCB’s and everyone else back equally, about 45% across the board
Brokers don’t like Open offers, they are a pain and time consuming. The company insisted not because it needs another 500k, we had that in the orders but because it does want to make sure that everyone here get the same opportunity as those in the placing.
Offers are trickly, you have leak issues, you can only go out to under 150 not regulated firms which is why you cant just reach out to all your sharehodlers. To reach investors you have to go to PCB’s. if we reach to everyone then you’re the territory of issuing a full prospectus and that is 4-6 months’ work and hundreds of thousands of pounds.
Now the company can go to share holders its knows so if you a significant shareholder I would make sure Gordon or nick has you details.
So lets just review where we are.
We started with 500k tonnes of resources, we are now over 2.4M.
We have proved we have battery grade lithium
We will have a pilot plant constructed any day.
We have
My understanding is that ASX is dealing with a back log of listings and the process is very slow. The company had hoped it would be finalised by September then October then early November. The issue facing the company is that we are currently seasonal for exploration work. When producing you can weatherise and produce all year as many mines do. But CTL is above the snow line. If the company wanted to move forward with committing to this season’s exploration cycle it had to raise fund before end of November to leave time to do the work in the Chilean Summer. Its not an option to really just go slow and wait for markets, you essentially lose a whole season. I fully believe we will progress to the ASX, but it looks like we won’t get approval till Dec or Jan and then we miss the season. We started looking at the market but there is quite a process to capital raising, review of working capital, certain due diligence update, placing letters, circulars, updating investor decks, verifying the deck. . This takes a week or two and we had all been working the basis of the ASX. The decision was not taken lightly. Not one is happy with the price or dilution here. Speculation on chat rooms on a raise while correct also lead to market sell off. Aldo and Jason as main board directors and founders will also significant dilution in this round just as we all have. However it was really felt this was the best long term option.
Now this is my personal belief and entirely mine and not the company’s but I think we end up getting bid for. Once you get the pilot plant going and sending samples and another season of dilling we become and interesting target. There is real uplift in M&A activity. The public market is down but industry is showing real signs of concern about securing lithium supply, and we are in Chile as a free trade country to the US. This has real value. Maha and Aldo had a fantastic trip in China, saw a number of DLE plants, chemical companies, battery companies, car companies. There is a real industry excitement in the company and assets.
I personally take solace from remembering 4/5years ago telsa was almost out of cash and going to be sold to google. I wish I had brought shares in tesla then.
On the Pilot Plant the company is late. We are late and no bones about it and has lead to frustrato there were some shipping delays, engineering delays, pump issues, it happens and sadly all out of the control of management. However it is all progessing in the background, albeit slower than anyone would of liked, I hope we will get some new updates very soon.
The pilot plan is key. Soon after its completed construction, they start commissioning, this about 3 weeks, then we start to produce. We will produce what is called an eluate. Its lithium in solution at 1%. The pilot plant is there to test the upstream extraction and the DLE process. Allows the company to trial different resins, tweak various pr
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written on phone please forgive typos, and missed words
dear all, firstly as well the ctl broker, i’m also a shareholder, not only me, but my father, mother, cousin, ex-girlfriend, cousin, my cousin’s wife, my cousin’t best client, my brother children’s college fund, my 5-6 closet friends and every major close client, i have my stock at 30, and 47 and my family last purchased at 72 and no family have sold. as such i’m acutely aware of the concerns expressed here.
i remain a huge supporter of the ev transition over the next 5-10 years, the lithium sector and ctl within that sector.
i drop in here occasionally to try and give some colour and where possible some clarity. while there is some very inciteful and sensible input here you do also get some very tenuous speculation and misguided comments. i would like to reiterate that nothing here should be taken as investment advice, and as company fdc publish research notes on our clients but they are not independent research as disclosed. they are based on robust financial modelling and sector analysis based on financial numbers from the scoping studies etc.
if we take a step back we raised money a year ago for exploration, the dle pilot and to pursue the asx listing, this is all clearly disclosed and we said the funds would last a year.
when gordon references debt etc, i believe he is talking about construction finance. the company has been approached by a number of parties to explore debt financing of the plant. usually these conversation start a good 12-24 month before you would close. the company has a potentially highly cash generative asset once they get to production. the margins are huge, we are expecting to be around $4000 a ton cost, this will put us firmly in the lowest quartile of cost producers. only really the large evaporation pond producers are lower. if you think lithium could drop roughly 75% and we would still have a 50% margin.
as a side bar when you deal with an exchange it is a laborious process. a lot of people knock aim and knock nomads, but the platform does allow for the quick decision to raise capital once you listed. the standard list the tsx is the same as the asx and rightly so there are there to protect investors and they ask a lot of questions, they query everything as they should. . the company has been working diligently on the process which is far more onerous that an initial aim listing, its more akin to main board listing. the exchange asks a question the company replies within 2-3 day, then you hear nothing for 2 – 3 weeks. you basically back to the bottom of the pile and when you reach the top you get another, it’s not like you have a case officer who is there desperately trying to move you along. if they are busy you just wait and personally i think they tend to favour clean asx listing over a dual listing for their time. so it’s just a very involved process. but……
Many thanks again AEGOS
Empire Metals* (EEE LN) 5.15p, Mkt Cap £29m – Geologists see Pitfield as potentially developing into one of the world’s great hydrothermal metal ‘districts’
• Empire Metals is exploring for titanium and copper within the newly discovered Pitfield giant hydrothermal mineral system
• Pitfield is in the process of being defined as potentially one of the world’s district-scale sediment-hosted metal deposits.
• Many of the world’s major mining camps are built on giant sediment-hosted hydrothermal metal systems with Pitfield showing similar characteristics.
o Examples are the Central African Copper Belt, Athabasca Basin Uranium in Saskatchewan Canada, Red Dog Zinc-Lead District in Alaska, and the Carlin Gold Belt in Nevada
• Empire Metals is still looking for copper though drilling is currently showing significant scale and grades of titanium mineralization.
• The scale of the potential titanium deposit looks unlike anything we have seen before with a strike extent of 30 km and a 5km deep keel identified by coincident magnetics and gravimetric geophysical surveys.
outstanding contribution to Caledonia
over the last ten years
[which]... increased production, reduced costs and ... [delivered] ...
exploration success which we believe will, in due course, extend Blanket's life of mine ...
against the backdrop of a challenging operating environment and the COVID-19 pandemic
which introduced a new set of unanticipated operational challenges
• Diamond drilling is ongoing, and we are waiting on assays before further analysis. A second phase of RC drilling is also to soon commence across the extent of the core of the geophysical anomaly where high-grade titanium values have been identified by surface sampling and in the recent drilling.
• Neil O'Brien, Non-Executive Chairman, Ph.D. Economic geologist with over 35 years of international experience and former SVP Exploration & New Business Development at Lundin Mining is involved.
• Shaun Bunn, MD, Empire Metals is a metallurgist with >35 years' experience in exploration, mining, processing, and project development.
• See recent presentation for further details: https://www.empiremetals.co.uk/investors/reports- presentations/
Conclusion: We are not trying to guess the value of the titanium at Pitfield as this is far beyond anyone’s comprehension just now although the scale is impressive. Empire Metals is focussed on finding the higher grade, most valuable parts of this giant titanium deposit.
We are additionally interested in the other metals, such as copper, that the hot mineralised fluids which formed this massive hydrothermal metal system might have carried and deposited across the district.
*SP Angel acts as nomad and broker to Empire Metals
Thanks 4k
Many thanks
Don’t know why I didn’t google it, going a bit senile already.
Not good for 50 😩
Apologies so can the metal be create as I thought eee tio2 was only good for pigments.
Thanks in advance