Member Info for r7632

I been here a long time also. Most of the time (pre 2018) the share price was above 80p, and peaked about Jan 2018 after the DFS. I think it went over 140p very briefly.

Since then it's spiralled down.

Lithium America share price up 6 times from its low in February this year.

Has completed 50% of build of Argentina Brine mine set to produce 40k ton of Lithium pa at cost of 4,000 per ton. Has Spent or committed over 75%, or $575 million, already, and has another $200million available to complete. Its DFS was complete q3 2019. Argentina MIne 40 year life of mine. Reserves 2.0 Million Tonnes LCE.

Expects to complete Definitive Feasibility Study on Thacker Pass clay deposit by q4 2020.

Ganfeng own 16.7% of Lithium America.

Ganfeng have 51% of the Argentina Mine thru MineraExar. Lithium Americas has the remaining 49%.
Interesting that Ganfeng wanted to increase its stake in Argentina mine from 37.5% to 51% by putting in 160Million and raising output target from 25k pa to 40k pa.

NPV of $1.3 billion Market Cap 1.336B

So Lithium Americas has 49% of Argentina Brine Mine and Thacker Pass awaiting a DFS. Thacker Pass expected to produce 60k pa LCE Has measured reserves of 3.8 Million tonnes LCE + 2.1mill Indicated + 2.3 Mill inferred.

Just a thought BCN has market cap of $50million and a NPV if 1.25 billion.

What are the figures for Lithium America?

I would have thought the relative market cap vs NPV will align as BCN starts to build out the mine. Not necessarily as late as production as I thought Lithium America's is not complete yet.

Another comparison. Would be total Lithium resources. And cost per tonne of production for each.

Well their Broker recons 114p

But I think that will be re-rated when Ganfeng issue the EPC, and again well financing is completed. As the prospects for Lithium demand by 2023 seems have been doubled by Tesla's Battery day event I would expect this to be an upwards move in the price target.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jB9rvcYTAIY&ab_channel=RockStockChannel

Talks Lithium

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GlNEq7kGavs&feature=youtu.be&ab_channel=InvestingNews

https://investingnews.com/daily/resource-investing/battery-metals-investing/lithium-investing/howard-klein-opportunities-tesla-battery-day/?mqsc=E4121072

https://www.fool.com/amp/investing/2020/09/30/why-piedmont-lithium-lithium-americas-and-sunpower/

A ton of lithium metal is enough to build about 90 electric cars.

When all is said and done, building a million cars requires about 60,000 tons of LCE.

Are these not contradictory. Second say 1 Car requires 0.06 Tons Lithium. Or 16.666 Cars per Tons. And the First statement says one ton is enough for 90 Cars?

Anyway what we do know is BCN is projected to be amongst the lowest cost to produce Lithium @ $4000 per ton. It has a huge mine resources life of 200 years. And takes 5 days from digging to process into Lithium carbonate. Surely it has scope to greatly increase the output to cater for the huge demand if the money is there to invest in building the plant. Just see how many giga factories Tesla is building at once china, Berlin, Texas....

Also of note is - "Panasonic is spending $100 million to expand battery by 3.5 gigawatt hours". Tesla is supposed to be producing 10gwhr from its pilot Roadrunner plant. I don't expect they are spending $300 Million to do that!

I really like this bit.
"If LCE costs double, the cost of an EV would have to rise a few hundred dollars to offset the higher commodity costs"

Roll on q4 2020 and see the Gangfeng cost for the EPC and financing. Things should get interesting indeed.

If you look at the two very different Assets. One is safe clays easily dug up and processed. And is a huge resource with plenty of surrounding land that possibly has further Lithium but has not been surveyed and drilled.

The Zinwald resource is much smaller and I believe requires Mining technique of shafts and tunnels. I imagine Erris already with a Gold Mine in Sweden and Irish Zinc mine has expertise in this type of mining. Although in the RNS it wasn't clear if they are prospecting or actually producing Gold and ZInc. Ultimately we hope that Bacanora will regain its investments in Zinwald and then some. In the meantime it is a least attempting to release value from Zinwald where it currently has no resources to further its progress.

Post period end, GRES completed its concentrator design work and Ganfeng completed its flow sheet design testwork for the production of battery-grade lithium from samples provided by the pilot plant; Ganfeng is now integrating these results into a larger scale design, and remains on schedule to deliver its final engineering packages at the end of Q4 2020.

Looks like BCN are still on schedule for end of Q4 2020.

https://youtu.be/yrxN9w82SOA

Demand for Lithium from Tesla is high. Piedmont cannot supply all the Lithium Tesla needs. Current deal would give them 8k tonnes . Enough for 150k cars at 50kw. I have an EV. I think 75kw plus gives better range and longevity as fewer cycles needed for 500k miles. Tesla says 300 mile range is new normal and that means 70 plus Kwhrs.

Says 4.5 million tonnes of lithium required per annum by 2030. Previous estimate of 2 milllion tonnes of lithium.

Assumption was by 2030 3 Tw with 500gw from Tesla. So 2.5tw from others plus 3tw from Tesla == 5.5tw.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=su_UC9ZCD-0&ab_channel=PBSNewsHour

Talks about Chinese Batteries in Electric Buses all over America that need recycling, and Tesla has bee selling there since 2012 and some of those will require recycling soon. That it will supply LG Chem. That is has bought stake in Bacanora and recycling plant could be in Sonora near the BCN MIne. They would aim to supply Lithium to North America.

Warns Mexico off nationalisation of resources citing Bolivia where nothing is happening because they nationalised resources. So no jobs or money from doing so as no mines are built.

All sounds still good that there is still interest in and around developing the Baconora Sonora mine.

Things should get interesting soon, I hope.

https://www.ft.com/content/8739e8fb-2700-42b7-a407-461428124885

https://cleantechnica.com/2020/09/28/tesla-inks-lithium-supply-deal-with-piedmont-may-buy-10-stake-in-lg-energy/

Things are moving quickly with Tesla.

Surely all this will lead to more interest in bringing BCN into production.

And the intermediate product from clay to lithium is?

I thought conversion at mine was the most cost effective as Tesla does not want to transport large amounts of spudomere or Clay's around the world for processing.

That the tonnage of clay vs lithium. 17k tonnes of lithium to transport is better than xxxxxx? Tonnes of clay.

1/3 of 160,000 tonnes of spudomere for 5 years.

So 53k tonnes of spudomere from hard rock per year. Apparently spudomere contains 8% lithium (article from SGS). So Tesla will get approx 4240 tonnes of Lithium from Piedmont.

Also it's fixed price contract. Not market price. And we dont know what that price is.
Interesting.

So that means Tesla will somehow convert to Lithium Hydroxide for their batteries?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JuuBt9ScUuE&t=3150s&ab_channel=BenchmarkMinerals

Says Tesla is making Lithium Mining sound easy. Its not as straightforward as they suggested. So if Tesla want Lithium from North America I suggest they contract with BCN/Ganfeng and they can send over the border from Sonora to a Tesla Cathode plant.

Considering all the effort to get drilling samples, feasability studies, test plants, epcs, etc I can't see Tesla producing Lithium for 6-10 years.

Even if they do Bacanora is low cost, battery grade and will be needed to meet global demand of 30TW of Battery that Elon predict will be required by 2030.