Roundtable Discussion; The Future of Mineral Sands. Watch the video here.
No idea, I’m a LTH personally, but you see it time after time on shares, especially smaller shares where the price can be affected by a few trades, just seems to be a phenomenon, knee jerk reaction or whatever you want to call it?
There may be further updates on the drilling results updating resources, or something about ore sorting, but the big event everyone I think is waiting for is towards the end of September when Barclays presents its findings on the offers entered for offtake/JV/take over/aliens landing, who knows, but we are all very hopeful!
I think a lot of short term players have sold out thinking they will have plenty of time to get back in before the Barclays news, hence the lull in the share price currently. It is unfortunate as then you get these peaks and troughs rather than nice steady rises, but that’s trading for you!
Really fascinating that spodumene is the preferred product simply because there was so much of it knocking around that they established a chemical conversion process for it.
So our Petalite concentrate at over 4% li20 would seem noteworthy, especially if the conversion process to battery grade material was feasible and cost effective?
From the article it also seems to suggest that having your own chemical conversion operation is the way to go, and the Namibian government would also seem to be encouraging processing of the product internally. Whether Andrada would go down this route themselves or use a 3rd party will be interesting to explore, but it doesn’t look cheap to setup. Certainly my personal feeling is that some of the joint venture proposals could well be including provision for this.
I think that the recent raise was very interesting with the upcoming Barclays sorting of potential offtakers/JV/offers. My personal feeling is that with some of this extra money they will be fast tracking the spodumene resource drillings to sure up the density mappings, especially on lithium ridge.
I know it’s been mentioned a few times, but the comment AV made about eye watering amounts offered to buy out the mine was very interesting. Obviously this was just a general discussion, otherwise there would have been a more formal announcement, (and personally I don’t see an offer coming anytime soon, but who knows?), but if they were prepared to offer eye watering sums, then what would they be prepared to put on the table to fast track a meaningful supply of spodumene going forward? And let’s not forget there are multiple companies trying to get in the door here.
I would expect 9-10p to be hit before the September announcement, after that who knows?
One point I hope is mentioned soon though is the ore sorting circuit, when is this being commissioned and what effect will it have on feeds and ultimately AISC?
I think what will be of great interest to the lithium offers that Barclays is looking through will be the discovery of spodumene in ML129. I think that find is being overlooked currently, but will be very significant going forward.
One thing you can say for certain, mine life will never be an issue!
Next question is, with all this resource what’s the best way to get it out, the slow and steady option they’ve successfully implemented so far, or the large capitol expansion which is bold but could leave you very exposed if there’s any kind of downturn? I think the Barclays bods will have some interesting results when they come back with their conclusions which will hopefully clarify things in terms of future expansion. With the ore sorting coming online soon as well which will greatly increase volume, and hopefully reduce ASIC, these are very exciting times.
One thing I do appreciate though is the great communication from AV, way above any other share I hold in terms of keeping us informed, plus he and his team get their proposed projects done on budget and on time. Personally I feel this company has such a massive potential going forward, I think the next few months could get very interesting indeed!
Interesting article in ft today on Andrada, also tweeted by AV:
https://t.co/UlM1ftrk95
Potential for an interesting grab of resources East vs West?
Yes, I believe that was the spodumene sample, a lot of unknowns at this point on quantity and density, but could be very interesting going forward as they produce more samples to see if this is a commercially mineable resource. If so then for sure get a spodumene circuit up and running asap!
I think again some people are looking at this a little skewed.
Can we all just remember first and foremost that Andrada are initially a tin mining company, they found tantalum which was a great by product, but a small revenue option, and then discovered Petalite. The other companies listed here are straight out lithium players from the get go and producing spodumene.
Now Andrada had plans in place to increase their tin production, which they have done, and lower the AISC, which they have also done, you can’t then just stick the brakes on and say, hey let’s just concentrate on Petalite cause that’s where the big bucks could be.
In my view they are doing exactly the right thing, they have the pilot lithium circuit coming online in June at which point they will be able to produce bulk samples for offtakers to evaluate, tin production is up and AISC is down. As someone else mentioned here the ore sorting will be incorporated into this new circuit as well so will be very interesting to see what effect this has on ore produced and AISC.
I know some people have got a real downer on this company, but in my view they’ve met every timetable event they’ve set out to do, they are profitable, (for me if they can sell their product well over the ASIC then that’s profit, some would disagree on this), they consistently beat production targets and the communication is excellent, unlike a lot of AIM companies out there.
let’s just wait till they get the pilot lithium circuit up and running and see what happens then, personally I’m very confident the company is being run in a very professional manner and I’m very happy to be invested here.
Yes, production costs will rise, no one is questioning that, but with the requirement for tin going forward will the price continue to flounder where it is? I don’t believe it will you obviously do, that’s fair enough, but let’s be honest no one knows for sure. So you stating that going forward they will lose cash is simply a finger in the air, there is no factual basis for this argument currently, if we could predict metals prices going forward we’d all be millionaires!
As for the lithium circuit they are extracting Petalite, what they do after this is what’s being tested, they could sell this directly to the ceramics sector but obviously would command better pricing if they were able to convert it to sell into the ev sector, which would obviously require additional processing. But to say they are building a circuit that they have no idea on is being a little disingenuous.
I respect that all have our own views, I think in this case it’s just one we’ll have to agree to disagree about.
From my calculations they made approx £1.5m in the last quarter, with the new increased throughput already online that is expected to increase by 50% next year, so, and I know it’s not a taken, but say prices and grades stay roughly the same, that’s roughly £9million, for a £60m market cap for a fledgling miner that’s pretty damn good in my book, but the icing on the cake is the tantalum and lithium they will produce on top of that. Perhaps we need to see more about off take agreements when they get to that stage, but personally I don’t feel they need a huge ramp up in production from here to make meaningful profits.
True, the grades aren’t great, but Andrada are already profitable. Their current spend to lower the ASIC further and increase throughput simply makes it even more profitable. Sure if tin starts dipping below $20k then this equation changes but personally I don’t see this as a long term trend with essential metals demand looking very robust out to 2030 and beyond, but that’s my personal view, hence why I’m very much invested here. I’m not even going down the by products of lithium and tantalum here, just talking tin.
If they were still just producing tin by then it would be, however the pilot lithium circuit will be up and running by June as well as the tantalum circuit and as quoted before by AV these effectively come for free. Very exciting times, but obviously current events are putting a dampener on just about everything!
Very happy with the presentation as it looks like a company going places and planning to regularly update the market with their progress, cant ask more than that.
It will be interesting to see the figures required for the phase 2 expansion and how they plan to raise that cash when the time comes.
As I understand it at UIS they will be producing Petalite which I think is about half the resale value of Spodumene, but I don’t have an up to date price on this.
There is a process that can convert Petalite to Spodumene but I don’t think that’s planned as yet.
It will be interesting what they outline for their lithium production in their 5 year plan.
How far ahead can you hedge nickel prices? ;-)
It’s one thing to overwhelm a country by superior force, but altogether another issue to hold on to it when the people don’t want you there.
You’d have thought the Russians would have learned their lesson from their time in Afghanistan, this simply will not end well for them……