Member Info for pawgee

£56m new funding announced- with NWF becoming major shareholder- will be interesting what happens next! All the company directors have added to their shareholdings .

Expect this to get major news coverage

Gingy. The latest PEA published on 30 April 2024, notes that the cost of production is $13,661/ton, making South Crofty potentially, one of the lowest cost tin mines globally , so a tin price north of $30k/t gives plenty of headroom.

IMHO there will be some positive news on production funding before end March & hopefully a healthy uptick in SP

The FMF is the world's premier platform for minerals & CUSN are part of the UK delegation, together with UK Gov, Cornish Chamber of Mines & Minerals, Cornwall Mining Alliance, Cambourne School of Mines, Cornwall Council, so heavy national & south-west representation.

Recent report in the FT highlighted that worlds largest oil co., Saudi Aramco, wants to diversify into battery metals, etc.

Not beyond the realms of imagination if funding could come from this direction?

Mudd warned of the dangers to UK businesses if critical mineral supplies were interrupted. A halt in niobium supply, for example, would have “a significant effect on the automotive industry”.

He urged the government to press ahead with a plan to secure the UK’s access to the critical materials. “We’ve done the analysis. Government will need to do the policy strategy development.”

The UK will have to consider subsidies for new mines and more stockpiling to avoid supply bottlenecks for critical materials, the head of the UK’s minerals supply watchdog has warned.

Gavin Mudd, director of the UK Critical Minerals Intelligence Centre (CMIC), said one option would be legislation similar to the US Inflation Reduction Act, which offers subsidies for the domestic production of some minerals. He also said the government could build up stockpiles of critical materials — an approach used by the US Department of Defense.

“That’s what has to be looked at, what works best for the UK context,” Mudd said.

There is growing concern about the vulnerability of the UK and other industrialised nations to shocks in the mineral supply chain as decarbonisation increases demand for a range of materials that were previously little-used.

“We’re living in a globalised world,” Mudd said. “That’s what we have to grapple with.”

Gavin Mudd

Gavin Mudd: ‘We’ve done the analysis. Government will need to do the policy strategy development’ © Anna Gordon/FT

Late last year the CMIC put together a list of the minerals most at risk from shortages and most important to UK industry. Top of this “critical minerals list” was niobium, a relatively obscure metal but a vital ingredient in many forms of steel. More than 90 per cent of the world’s niobium comes from one country — Brazil.

The CMIC report, commissioned by the Department for Business and Trade, was the first study of its kind since 2021.

Mudd said that the government would have to look at alternative ways to obtain materials that come from a narrow range of sources, possibly through expanding UK mineral production, such as the lithium mine under development in Cornwall.

Lithium was among 34 critical minerals on the CMIC’s list. There were other sites for lithium beyond Cornwall, Mudd said, as well as nickel deposits in Scotland.

Mudd added that, when cobalt supplies ran short in the 1990s, at the height of the civil war in the Democratic Republic of Congo, some sectors had found alternatives to the mineral. He suggested this could be another means of reducing vulnerability to supply chain risks.

“They found . . . alternatives that could do the same thing,” Mudd said.

Cobalt was second on the CMIC’s critical minerals list, while rare earth elements came third. Rare earths are 17 different minerals critical in production of the magnets at the heart of many devices, from electric vehicle motors to wind turbines.

Mudd said that the supply of some minerals, such as Fluorspar, was becoming more difficult. The UK has become entirely dependent on imports of Fluorspar, which is used to make fluorine and fluoride for a variety of nuclear energy and metalworking processes, since 2023, when the last British mine for the product closed in Derbyshire.

……continues on next post

Not holding my breath

So according to my calculations- 13Mt at 1.8% Sn at a tin price of $30k/Sn = $7b

……….7b pops its head up again :)

From the data I’ve seen the US imports practically 100% of its tin & last year spent almost $900m on imports.

Interesting timing of US State Dept visit to SC, especially as CUSN are now looking to secure production financing. Coincidental?

Was looking at the last CUSN broker update by Cavendish from August, which noted that the current “sum of the parts” valuation (ie. Break up valuation) is 16p, so SP is currently highly discounted. Can’t imagine this will last very long.

It’s been quite some time since the last drilling program was completed, so would like to think updated mineral resource estimate will be out soon. Would also expect this to be out before any funding announcement is made - just my opinion

Go to page 13

https://www.sedarplus.ca/csa-party/viewInstance/view.html?id=0c11f8b7998bcd967855537bb7ee192eb02a7c938c811ce7&_timestamp=6735041316064554

Vii

Went onto the Sedar+ website and at 15.33EDT they posted the news release from 21/10/24 advising on Don Turvey's . Curious why they posted this here 9 days after the RNS

What are the odds of Cornwall being mentioned in the budget on Wednesday?

3rd part of FT article

Extracting lithium from brines

Cornish Lithium and rival UK group Northern Lithium plan to extract the mineral from brines using a nascent technology known as “direct lithium extraction.”

Experts said the energy-intensive process was used in China but there were few projects using it elsewhere.

Kathryn Goodenough, principal geologist at the British Geological Society, said long-term production forecasts could be challenging because “the brines can move” and it was difficult to predict how quickly they would be “recharged” with lithium.

Cornish Lithium plans to extract brine at a series of small sites, each of which would require around £30mn in capital expenditure and could cumulatively produce 15,000 tonnes by 2030.

LevertonHelm, which produces lithium chemicals in the UK, said it would ideally take “all the material that’s produced from Cornish’s [brines] project.”

Cornish Lithium — which wants the government to set a target for domestic production of 50,000 tonnes per year — hopes to jump-start UK production by extracting lithium from granite and from the underground brines that run between cracks in the rocks in Cornwall.

The company, which reported an £8.6mn loss last year, is aiming to produce 25,000 tonnes a year by 2030, enough to supply more than 500,000 electric cars.

But lithium prices have crashed by more than 50 per cent in the past 12 months and are currently around half the $20,000 level that Cornish Lithium said was needed to create the incentive to develop new supplies. The company expects its granite mining project to be profitable below that level, but did not disclose at what price.

Imerys British Lithium, a joint venture between the French multinational and the UK start-up, plans to produce 21,000 tonnes of lithium per year by 2030 in a neighbouring Cornish mining project that is expected to cost around £575mn.

Cornish Lithium’s demonstration plant will produce samples of lithium hydroxide for customers such as carmakers, and the company is finalising a study that will outline the cost of scaling up its granite mining operation.

Chief financial officer Varshan Gokool said costs would be higher than the $243.8mn in capital expenditure estimated in 2022, partly due to inflation.

US-government backed investor TechMet, the UK’s National Wealth Fund and private investor the Energy & Minerals Group ploughed a combined $67mn into Cornish Lithium last year, which they said could be followed by a second round of up to $210mn.

Brian Menell, CEO of TechMet, said the project’s lithium would not “be at the bottom of the global cost curve but it won’t be at the top either”.

Getting the lithium out is only the start of a complex supply chain, with experts stressing the need for the UK to invest in mineral processing and recycling to grow a domestic industry.

While much mining occurs in Australia and South America, “you need to worry about the refining and the battery manufacture” to reduce dependence on China, said Colin Church, CEO of the Institute of Materials, Minerals & Mining.

Many lithium miners ship their material to processors in China, where it is converted into lithium hydroxide or carbonate that is then bought by carmakers.

“Digging it out of the ground and shipping it somewhere else isn’t increasing your security of supply,” said Jeff Townsend, founder of the Critical Minerals Association.

Cornish Lithium plans to produce lithium hydroxide, in what it says would be a first in the UK. The Imerys joint venture also plans to process on site and sell lithium carbonate. Meanwhile, Tees Valley Lithium and Green Lithium are aiming to build refineries in the UK.

First part of article in FT this morning about Cornish Lithium. There is a mention of a Nigel Reed ( early investor) Could this be the same N Reed who has sizeable shareholding in CUSN?

Rest of article to be pasted after

For the developers of the UK’s first lithium hydroxide demonstration plant, its opening this month marked a bet on future demand for a metal that is key to the energy transition but which has slumped in price.

Cornish Lithium’s plant in a rural corner of Cornwall in southern England was unveiled a week after mining company Rio Tinto announced plans to acquire Arcadium Lithium, in a deal that will make it the third-largest producer of a material that is used in the batteries that power electric vehicles.

General Motors is also pumping almost $1bn into a US lithium mine, in the belief that a price slump caused by a glut of supply and weak EV sales will not persist.

Jeremy Wrathall, chief executive of Cornish Lithium, which has raised £98mn since it was founded in 2016, said he was confident about the long-term prospects for lithium even though current low prices were a concern.

“This is always the scariest time but [also] the best time to invest because you know it [the price weakness] is unsustainable,” he said. Rio Tinto “must be seeing what we think we can see”, Wrathall added.

Nations worldwide are scrambling to secure access to the critical minerals needed to meet net zero targets. The world will face a global supply gap of 1.4mn tonnes of lithium by 2040, according to data company Benchmark Mineral Intelligence.

Many countries are also pushing to reduce their dependence on China, which dominates the supply chains for many critical minerals.

In the UK, industry and government interest in shoring up supply chains has encouraged a range of companies to invest in a domestic lithium sector, with carmakers Nissan and Jaguar Land Rover-owner Tata developing battery factories.

But experts say the development of a domestic industry faces challenges that include insufficient government incentives, high energy prices and a slow planning system.

It would be “hard to justify spending 100s of millions unless there’s some sort of government help, with either a guaranteed price for the product or further investment,” said Nigel Reed, a former city analyst and an early investor in Cornish Lithium.

Lithium can be mined from rocks or extracted from brines, or salty water, such as those found in salt lakes in South America.

The UK will need 135,000 tonnes of lithium carbonate equivalent by 2040 for domestic battery production, up from 25,000 tonnes in 2025, according to the Faraday Institution research group.

Britain has no commercial-scale lithium mines at present. But the Advanced Propulsion Centre, which seeks to accelerate the energy transition, has estimated the nation could produce around 56,500 tonnes by 2030.

Vii - pasted the FT article below.

Out of interest, does the FT link at the bottom of my earlier post not work? I’m allowed to share a certain number of articles per month as part of my subscription, but not sure if this would apply to posting on boards such as this.

Companies that import critical minerals into Britain for use by manufacturers will be able to obtain financing for the first time from UK Export Finance, Rachel Reeves will announce in the Budget on Wednesday.

The chancellor will say that the measure is needed to help Britain in the global race to secure materials such as lithium, graphite and cobalt that are key to making products ranging from phones to electric vehicles.

The Treasury said this would be particularly beneficial for manufacturers in industries such as defence, aerospace and making batteries for electric vehicles. Carmakers Nissan and Jaguar Land Rover-owner Tata are building battery factories in the UK, which experts say is one important step towards growing a domestic critical minerals supply chain.

The goal of shifting energy systems away from fossil fuels and towards renewable energy sources such as solar and wind will require a huge increase in the use of critical minerals.

The UK is part of a coalition of 14 nations and the European Commission called the “Minerals Security Partnership”, which is trying to increase international collaboration and co-financing for the sector.

The US and China have been embroiled in a trade war in which Washington has imposed export curbs on semiconductors and other advanced technologies, while Beijing has retaliated by restricting exports of some minerals.

The tension has also spilled over into the EU, which this month said it would impose tariffs on imports of Chinese electric vehicles following months of ratcheting tensions between Brussels and Beijing.

Chinese companies control 90 per cent of the world’s processing capacity for rare earths and more than half the processing capacity for nickel, lithium and cobalt.

Jeff Townsend, founder of the Critical Minerals Association, said it was crucial that the UK develop a domestic critical minerals industry to secure long-term supply, a push that the government would need to support.

“There might be projects that don’t work [commercially without government support] but where the strategic value to having your own supply chain far outweighs that,” he said.

“You’ve got to build everything all at once,” from mines to processing and refining and battery manufacturing, he said. “We’re in a global race.”

The government said the change would make it easier for UKEF, the UK’s export credit agency, to secure finance contracts for critical mineral suppliers in countries such as Australia with large mineral deposits.

“This addresses a gap in the UK’s existing financial support for manufacturers looking to secure these key minerals, who previously would not have been able to access government support in order to do so,” a spokesperson said.

They added that the decision strengthened “UKEF’s world-leading export finance support”, bringing the country in line with competitors.

It comes on the back of the government’s lau

Article also in Financial Times,

UK chancellor to unlock financing for critical minerals supply

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Read the full article at:

https://on.ft.com/3Ur75f1

IMHO- the granting of these options puts The Don in the same position as the other senior executives at CUSN & is based at the same level ( makes sense) . I think this has to be done prior to any future news flow ( eg. Updated resource estimates/PEA / funding arrangements) that could impact SP.

I’d like to think over the next 3 months a number of RNS’s will be issued that will cause the SP to take off.

GLA

IMHO, it is unlikely CUSN will need to use the full £7m facility, so interest charges unlikely to be at the top end. Facility, gives them plenty of breathing space until long-term funding in place. IMO 15% isn’t off the scale, as I’ve seen other 6 month facilities up to 20%

Also, cash is useful to ensure mine preparation targets aren’t inhibited prior to March 2025.

Interesting times ahead