Ryan Mee, CEO of Fulcrum Metals, reviews FY23 and progress on the Gold Tailings Hub in Canada. Watch the video here.
Lithium price just keeps rising...
https://www.mining-journal.com/research/news/1441417/lithium-prices-hit-new-all-time-high
I don't think you can compare a brine that is 30 degrees C with one that is >100 and boiling in a power plant and depositing salts as it boils. Very different challenges for processing if I am right in those differences between CTL and Salton sea project.
Lynas is a world class orebody - nothing quite like it elsewhere in terms of grade but still early days at Wudinna!
Our Mt Weld mine produces high-quality rare earth concentrate from one of the world’s richest deposits, due to the high relative concentrations of neodymium, praseodymium, and europium.
The main deposits are hosted within what is called the soil/regolith horizon, which blankets a layer of the mine that comprises carbonatite. This forms shallow lenses and sheets which are generally located within 60 metres of the surface. Our most important rare earths source, the Central Lanthanide deposit, is located at the centre of the carbonatite while the niobium, tantalum and other deposits are generally located towards the outer fringes.
Lynas’ initial mining activities were successfully completed in June 2008. During this campaign, we mined 773,300 tonnes of ore with an average grade of 15.4 per cent REO. We stockpiled this ore on site according to its grade and mineralogy ready for downstream processing.
A reminder of why to invest although I really wish that the management would do a bit more marketing and be more proactive to encourage shareholders..
Europe will require 35 times more lithium and seven to 26 times the amount of increasingly scarce rare earth metals compared to its limited use today in order to meet the EU’s Green Deal goal of climate neutrality by 2050, a study has found.
The energy transition will also require far greater annual supplies of aluminium (equivalent to 30 per cent of what Europe already uses today), copper (35 per cent), silicon (45 per cent), nickel (100 per cent), and cobalt (330 per cent), researchers from KU Leuven University in Belgium have said.
https://eandt.theiet.org/content/articles/2022/04/europe-needs-to-rapidly-ramp-up-rare-metals-supply-to-meet-climate-goals/
With potential for a meaningful REE resource along with Gold, the government might be throwing money at Cobra!
Federal minister for resources and water Keith Pitt said the Accelerator Initiative will provide grants to strategically significant critical minerals projects at the early to mid-stage to fast-track them to market.
“By backing these important projects, we are also driving private sector investment to enhance Australia’s strong international reputation as a reliable supplier of the resources the world needs,” Mr Pitt said.
Mr Pitt said the newly launched 2022 Critical Minerals Strategy, sets out to grow Australia’s critical minerals sector, expand downstream processing, and help meet future global demand.
“The strategy will cement Australia’s position as a leading producer of critical minerals, while contributing to our national security and economic prosperity,” Mr Pitt said.
https://www.theassay.com/articles/analysis/australian-government-going-all-in-on-critical-minerals/?utm_campaign=The%20Assay&utm_medium=email&_hsmi=211126750&_hsenc=p2ANqtz-829fwXXp8C5S1-csgYcd_h3YvTHsdy1qMEy25Bg3j7Bm1xn7HzcA0BKO_wsUMUAQftZyrSk4q7fRoLExAjq8hv9rViPfG1BV-UE8Mcp5XRwITrIZg&utm_content=211126750&utm_source=hs_email
Zak Mir mentions possible 6p target on technical analysis not that I am into chart analysis but that would give the company a market cap of £25.3M based on 423,110,510 shares.
Given the REE results and solid gold resource I think that is perfectly achievable and hopefully we should see a steady climb with more good REE results, IOCG drilling etc and now there is an expanded land position. The Company has a proven methodology to target that ground for Au and REE through calcrete sampling. Hopefully Zak will help the herd arrive but it will pay to get in now around 3p
DYOR
Thanks for sharing KS, good to see Tungsten West recognised as an important player in the market and exciting that we are probably closer to production than many other projects.
Musk responded to a tweet on Friday about the surging price of lithium over the last decade.
"Price of lithium has gone to insane levels!" he tweeted.
"Tesla might actually have to get into the mining and refining directly at scale, unless costs improve.
"There is no shortage of the element itself, as lithium is almost everywhere on Earth, but pace of extraction/refinement is slow."
https://www.mining-journal.com/energy-minerals-news/news/1430157/tesla-the-miner-possibly-according-to-elon-musk
"While upwards of $500 billion has flowed into building the 285 gigafactories around the world - and $150 billion last year alone - critical mineral mines and mid-stream processing plants have not seen anywhere like this type of investment."
It may be low grade but it is the economics that are important and costs: no crushing of rock, no energy intensive milling, no expensive underground mining or geotechnical support required. Its dirt, they just dig it up with standard excavation equipment! Low cost mining and not even deep pits so easy to backfill, if not going down after the gold.
Great news from Cobra. Fox-Davies Capital published research on REE demand only yesterday. Very Timely. I think Cobra has a bright future. Link below to 40 page pdf.
https://danielfoxdavies.sharepoint.com/Shared%20Documents/Forms/AllItems.aspx?id=%2FShared%20Documents%2FPublic%20Research%20Documents%2FREE%20April%2022%2Epdf&parent=%2FShared%20Documents%2FPublic%20Research%20Documents&p=true&ga=1
Summary:
It is our world-view that rare-earths (REEs) are contrarily both the bottleneck and enabler for energy transition in our carbon-based economies toward more renewable energies.
-EV NdPr demand to grow 20x by 2030 to >64ktpa
-NdPr almost perfectly inelastic; -0.7% BEV on sales after doubling price
-Average European BEV & Hybrid units use 1.34kg & 0.37kg Nd, respectively
-REE market a Chinese monopoly, dominating processing, refining, PMMs
-Hybrids/PHEVs, not BEVs, will dominate future EV sales
-Forecast higher NdPr pricing into the near future
SP Angel report below - basically the Chinese need more lithium.
Chinese regulators express concerns over rising battery material costs
• China's Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) and State Administration for Market Regulation (SAMR) organised a meeting regarding the operation of the lithium industry and on price increases of upstream materials for power batteries.
• The move is to maintain the supply of lithium products as well as price stability and promote the healthy development of new energy vehicles (NEVs) and power battery industry, according to a statement from MIIT.
• The meeting called for the upstream and downstream companies to strengthen the supply and demand matching, the formation of long-term, stable strategic collaboration, and jointly guide the rational return of lithium prices.
• Regulators also asked industry participants to step up efforts to secure supply and better support the development of China's strategic emerging industries.
• The meeting comes as lithium prices continue to rise, forcing EV companies to increase prices as they face huge cost pressures.
• On March 18, lithium carbonate prices in China were quoted at ¥504,000 per ton, up 74% from the beginning of the year and 479% year-on-year.
Agree, by the time this gets to production there will be a resolution to the gas supply issues. Hopefully Putin will be long shot or better hung by his own people like the murdering criminal that he is.
Maybe gas will be prioritised for decarbonising battery projects; Zinnwald has a part to play in moving away from fossil fuels and dependency on Russian gas even if it may need gas for production of the product. Maybe a hydrogen roasting solution will turn up. Zinnwald Lithium has feasibility and a much needed product for the future so I am holding and might even add more.
The project is in a great location, first class jurisdiction, I do not think the Ukraine situation is going to be a drag on the share price. If anything demand for REEs will increase with more defense spending and political uncertainty will support the gold price. Who would sell now with such good prospects ahead. The list of good mining investment jurisdictions appears to be shortening every year but Australia will stay good which is some comfort these days.
NdPr Rare Earth Oxide (China) US$173,060/t vs US$173,060/t
At that price it does not take many tonnes to really add value!
A quick look at the sums for a hypothetical deposit , Lets say a zone of:
300m x 300m x 10m x (2.3 SG) = 2.07Mt
(10m is very conservative - average thickness in RNS is 18.7m but intercepts 20-30m mentioned at >600ppm)
Average grade 600ppm (0.0006%), 70% ion adsorbed
2,070,000 x 0.0006% x 0.7= 870 T
Lets say they get $60,000t for the product? Could be a lot more..I don't know and will depend on the element mix.
870 T x $60,000/T = $52.2M for each zone.
10% added to market cap = US$5.2 or £3.8M on top of the value of gold.
I think these are conservative figures. Just be patient and lets see.
Double the thickness and the grade for a single zone and add potentially many more zones over the 1,928 km2 licence area and you can gamble that this could have great potential but lots more work to do. However no reason why there should not be many more zones of REE clays discovered. The laterite should be extensive and REE clays open in all directions as they say. Just fanciful thoughts so DYOR
-The average true width of mineralisation is 18.7m and the average Total Rare Earth Oxides ("TREO") is 597 ppm2
-High-grade intervals exist within the intercepts, where drillhole CBRC0044 intercepted a true width of 9.4m at 1,030 ppm TREO,
-CBRC0043 intercepted a true width of 4.7m at 1,160 ppm TREO and CBRC0054 intercepted 6m at 1,446 ppm TREO
-The highest 1m intercept grade was 9,024 ppm TREO in CBRC0048
If there is tin in the Hiltaba granites then they are evolved S-type (S for sediment melting) and likely to have associated Li, W and other elements such as REEs. You don't need very high levels of REEs in the underlying granite although it helps but the concentration factor can be around x6 in the overlying weathered clays if the weathering process has had enough time to work.
It helps if there has been alteration or fluorine bearing fluids/ griesens formed in the granite to speed up the alteration and weathering processes later on.
I will have to read up more on the Hiltaba suite and the granites at Wudinna but better get back to my day job first. Interesting to learn about a new deposit type, I was here originally for the gold and IOCG potential but REEs could be better.