Member Info for Noise

Claims that solid state quantum scape battery is 80+% charged in 12 minutes.

Seem to be preparing a cheap Li-Po based battery, with additional chemistries technologies for speciality and high performance.

The 'single unified cell' production will be from 2023+, claims 30-50% reduction in cost breakthrough. Here comes the juicy raw materials bit

I cannot speak German, but I seem to reading 240GWh of battery production in the EU? The car-to-power-grid idea has a big graphic in the background too.

All VW products to be electrified with batteries. Recycling and re-use of used batteries definitely a thing.

I'm not 100% sure, but they seem to be saying the car battery of the future is a single "unified" cell (not packs of cells)

Some rumours it might have something to do with a massively expanded rollout of a renewable green power plan for charging your vehicles at home, integrated with a bi-directional battery charger and ability to sell your car power back to the grid during fluctuations, with some kind of smart monitoring package.

Possibly mass re-use of used lithium batteries as well.

40 minutes until we see what all this power fuss is all about.

Are Volkswagen going to try and become an electric, solar, storage powerhouse on the side of their auto business?

I must say, the VW share price is one of the very few auto makers where the SP is considerably higher than its price before the batvirus came in. So there must be entry into some new markets.

Hydrogen, wind, solar and batteries are booming this year.

Has anyone seen the boom in UK battery storage? They have gone from 0, to a new 2021 record of 16.1GW of battery project planning applications in Britain. That's something approaching 16 million kg of lithium LCE (!!).

It'll be interesting to see how that plays. The US market was trading at £1.01 highs on Friday

Cinovec has caused all manner of international and NATO awareness, let that sink in, NATO intervened with the EU to ensure the raw materials could stay in Europe and Babis wasn't going to steal it. That is chuffing phenomenal for a mine.

In case anyone missed that key snippet from the EU battery speech, the business day before VW's battery day, let me recap what he said:

"The EIB's involvement is decisive here to de-risk raw materials projects, leverage additional private money and effectively, to close the estimated financial gap of 15 billion euros by 2025".

Within 3.5 years, 15 billion euros for "battery raw materials", hmm. I also note they are now developing another battery mineral, mangalese, at the moment, 100 miles from Cinovec. I make that three lithium mines potentially in the area, a mangalese mine close by, the Canadians have found Cobalt 100 miles away, Heck there's even some mine able nickel apparently in the ore mountains.

Well it's kinda strange, we are nearly halfway into 2021, but we're talking about 350ktpa lithium mining, from 0, with Emh and Rio Tinto possibly counting at a stretch for Jadar (tops 50ktpa) and EMH (50-100ktpa?) but where the feck does the other 100-200ktpa?

From the old presentations I saw, the Cinovec north site has lithium mica basically 10-50m under the ground in some areas, but there are sections that are 200-400m underground. You could practically excavate that stuff as an open pit if you wanted (I suspect they will use a tunnel shaft, but whatevs).

TBH 200-400m down is not a major challenge for modern day miners.

AHHHH here we go, this is probably why the EMH price went bananas today

There is an ongoing speech at the EU about batteries and investments.

https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/speech_21_1142

020 was another defining year for the European Battery Alliance. I am therefore glad that we have met today – the Commission, Ministers from leading Member States and the European Investment Bank – to assess the progress achieved, but mainly, to discuss the way forward.

Despite the pandemic, Europe continues to be a battery hotspot, closing the investment gap to our major Asian competitors, and in moving fast towards its open strategic autonomy in this critical sector.

In this context, let me highlight that almost 70 industrial projects are being supported by the Alliance, while expected to create 3 to 4 million jobs by 2025. Many of the battery investments have recently advanced their timelines and raised their expected output capacity.

The production of lithium-ion cell batteries has shown the most progress – and by 2025, we are now set to become the second largest battery cell producer in the world, behind China. Moreover, nearly 30 announced projects should largely satisfy the EU demand for batteries driven by e-mobility.

In fact, 2020 will go down as the year of the electric car in Europe, as this market saw historic highs – notably, over 1 million e-cars registered, effectively doubling their number on EU roads.

Now, what do we do to keep up the pace?! Here are our most pressing priorities as key takeaways from today's meeting.

First, we must accelerate the work on the proposed Batteries Regulation – i.e. adopt the General Approach in the Council under the Portuguese Presidency and strive for the adoption of the proposal by 2022 at the latest, while maintaining the overall level of ambition on sustainability and circularity. This is indispensable, given the expected ramp-up in the production of batteries by 2023.

Second, it is essential to strengthen the local sustainable sourcing and processing of raw materials used in batteries as well as local production of key components that determine the performance of lithium-ion batteries.

This calls for significant investment and greater mobilisation of public funding. As the Member States are finalising their national recovery and resilience plans, I encourage them to include investment in raw and advanced materials. Cohesion funds are another source of funding to consider.
The EIB's involvement is decisive here to de-risk raw materials projects, leverage additional private money and effectively, to close the estimated financial gap of 15 billion euros by 2025.
The Commission, for its part, will launch a Roundtable on the environmentally and socially sustainable raw materials mining and will publish a set of EU principles for sustainable raw materials to guide industrial action.

https://www.handelsblatt.com/politik/international/elektromobilitaet-europas-kraftakt-batteriezellen-fuer-sieben-millionen-elektroautos-pro-jahr-geplant/26998110.html

Does anyone want to sign up to today's Handelsblatt article/announcement? I suspect it is related to the VW announcement. Apparently they want 350,000,000kg of lithium annually for electric vehicles by 2025. That is a rather considerable stretch goal for EU lithium mining.

"Berlin, Düsseldorf The European Union wants to regain lost ground in the battery sector. By 2025, the EU wants to be able to produce battery cells for at least seven million electric cars every year, write Federal Economics Minister Peter Altmaier, his French colleague Bruno Le Maire and EU Commission Vice-President Maros Sefcovic in a guest article for the Handelsblatt (read here) .

Recently, “giant steps” were made in building up the industry. The EU is "in a position to build greater economic sovereignty and independence in a strategically important industry". Sefcovic and other top EU politicians launched the European Battery Alliance in 2017 to reduce the domestic auto industry's dependence on Asian battery cell manufacturers....."

PS does anyone think the marketing for VWs Power day is unusual? Particularly given Karel Havlicek's comments.

"VOLKSWAGEN POWER DAY - THIS IS NOT A CAR PRESENTATION!"

Karel: "Research of lithium mining in Cínovec and preparation of investment in Gigafactory. Today, I presented the joint activities of the state and CEZ in the field of building a battery chain at a meeting with the European Commissioners and Ministers of Economy of several EU countries at the High-Level Meeting of the European Battery Alliance."

FPVONE, could that simply mean that someone has an algo running to sell stock when it meets a minimum threshold? This is quite a common investor tactic, for example when a share is hovering around 80p, some investors may put automated rules in place to buy at 79p and sell at 81p.

You can make a moderate amount of money long term making 1-2% per trade, especially if your target is 4-8% annually.

How's things ladies and gents? I haven't popped by for a long while now, hello to all the long termers who probably put up with my nonsense for years!

Any major news to see? I just scanned the RNS to get a vague ballpark feel. At the moment my attention is elsewhere on other stocks and funds, but I may one day return to visit Suzy & co.

EMH US OTC was trading at £1.01 earlier

PS the instituional investor we just took on board is a moderately sized fund. They ploughed ~$5m of their entire $300m assets into EMH.

Let's see if other institutions start to board the train now. It is about time and moderately derisked.

EMH hired SMS group as the design team 6 months ago, so you would expect the bulk of the plant design is ready, putting the final touches in place. The RNS suggested late 2021 as having design and testing complete.

Been a strange month, pleased to see a positive direction back again and added a few k more.

Any insight into the Czech stock market delays? I can only imagine there are irritating pieces of paperwork and pedantic technical arguments to file. I imagine Keith is quite busy!

I recall that we recently updated from a "25ktpa" Li hydroxide mine, into a "minimum 25ktpa" mine, with some hints from the mining processing equipment team that this was being referred to as "phase 1". Which implies phase is probable, although phase 3+ is probably far too early stage to consider.

Assuming a phase 3 could kick in at 75ktpa, EMH's stake would be valued at £1.2bn, so we have a potential 3-10x valuation increase on the horizon.

No worries matey - great minds clearly think alike!

(whenever a stock tanks, I always check the last few RNS and a quick Twitter search!).

As per RNS:

"the issue of 1,613,708 new ordinary shares (represented by Depository Interests or "DI's") in lieu of these options in accordance with the terms and conditions of the consultant options held by European Energy and Infrastructure Group Limited. The options were originally granted to the consultant on 30 April 2020."

"Admission is expected to occur on or around 21 January 2021."