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I think that comment about where the lithium is destined for is pure speculation. At the moment, most car manufacturers prefer li carbonate.
Its all irrelevant really, as Hanwa are taking the first batch of production. We have produced battery grade lithium of 99.5% purity, which is what battery manufacturers want.
It maybe that Hanwa will be selling to manufacturers of grid storage batteries (which imo will be a huge market in itself). But lets let them decide who they sell the stuff to

Tesla didn't pull out. The SLPP couldn't raise the required finance in time. More to do with rem and bcn falling out and it been a really bad deal in the first place though I suspect.
It is a shame though. As observer pointed out, it would have been great to supply tesla, but it should have been negotiated at a more realistic price which would have hopefully got the project off the ground quicker.

I am not sure other base metals have anything to do with the process. I think you are getting confused with the EMH cinovec project and the historic tin mine they are using. Tin will be able to be sold as a by product of extracting their lithium. But it doesn't have anything to do with forming the compounds.
From what I can find, the chemical difference between the two is that carbonate has carbon in it. Hydroxide doesn't. In fact Hydroxide is used to scrub carbon dioxide from atmosphere in spacecraft and submarines. It forms water and and lithium carbonate.
Bu adding calcium hydroxide to carbonate, we get hydroxide. I think that is how the likes of tesla get their hydroxide at the moment.
But it would be nice if this step in the process could be skipped.
Still a huge market for carbonate though. I think its only tesla that use li hydroxide at the moment.

I hope they are looking at techniques for improving the process. That should be a given.
But at the moment we have a process that works, is in the lower cost quartile already, and have a customer wanting the supplies.
Lets get some money coming in first. The project is fully scaleable, so plenty of room for experimentation in the future.
My slight worry is that hydroxide seems to be the future. I think it is possible to convert carbonate to hydroxide? Is that something that is going to be considered? Or can hydroxide be produced direct from the clay?

I think you have to open LSE’s new Beta format to see the RNS. I couldnt see it this morning on the old format, but its showing in this Beta format.

https://m.londonstockexchange.com/exchange/mobile/rns/result.html?newsSource=RNS&nameCode=BCN&headlineId=&ftseIndex=&sectorCode=&text=&newsPerPage=20&rbDate=released&preDate=Last3Months

https://www.br.de/nachrichten/amp/wirtschaft/audi-hat-produktionsprobleme-beim-e-tron,RLiV0zM?__twitter_impression=true
Worth translating, but basically reads that Audi can’t build its e’tron as they cannot get hold of batteries fast enough. They only want to produce 300 a month.
I sense that the major automakers are going to start throwing money at the problem very soon.

I would hardly call 1 post every month on twitter about the general lithium market ramping! For the past couple of years posters have complained about the lack of information that gets published. Now he is taking every opportunity to mention that the funding that is going to be completed this quarter.

But one thing has changed. He is taking every opportunity to repeat that funding will be delivered in current quarter. He wouldn’t keep repeating it if he had doubts that it would happen. As we know, he is not the ramping type.

The more interesting thing about the situation is that you can bet Tesla haven't just forgotten there is a huge deposit of lithium a few hundred miles away from them. And for that matter, I am sure the guys at Ford have heard about us.
There is a huge Ford Plant in Hermosillo literally just round the corner from the pilot plant. I cant for one minute imagine that these huge companies are just going to let all production go off to Asia and the SGRF.
Remember that the initial 17,500 ton plant barely scratches the surface of what is going to be needed once the major car manufactures ramp up EV production in the twenties (and they are all publicly stating lithium ion powered ev’s are the way forward, look at the announcement last week from the German manufactures).
Sonora is easily scalable and you can bet once they have built this initial plant, the 2nd, 4th, 10th will follow on very quickly. And with the money that will be made from the first one, you can bet they will have no problem finding funding for expansion purposes.
If you ask me, Secker is playing this right. Its frustrating as a shareholder, but there is really no short term rush to get going. We have plenty of cash, so we might as well wait out for the correct deals. And the more we wait, the tighter the market is going to get. Its not like anybody else is managing to get their projects off the ground. The Morgan Stanley report has probably done us a favour in the long term, delaying other projects which will inevitably lead to higher carbonate and hydroxide prices.

I thought an agreement was signed, between the Sonora Lithium project partners and Tesla. But it was only for the sale of lithium at $6000 a ton. The plug was pulled because the partners didn’t secure the funding in the timeframe required. I don’t think in hindsight anybody was very serious about it (other than dl using it in his cryptic twitter feeds with a picture of him stood at Tesla hq which served to create a lot of excitement at REM at the time). I remember reading about Musk signing contracts just to give Juniors notoriety at the time to hopefully help them get going. I don’t suppose he ever expected it that cheap. It would never have been a good deal for us, as we can see now how hard it is getting funding with Hanwa taking a huge chunk of the first ten years production at market rates. We would have had no chance at $6000 dollars. Glad BCN got out and have moved away from Lenigas. Peter Secker seems the polar opposite to him, partly why I jumped ship from REM to BCN. He may be boring, but who needs ramping and huge spikes. (Wouldn’t complain about the share price getting back up to previous levels ASAP though!)

Thanks for the replay obs. That makes sense, but surely its not in the company’s interest to expect shareholders to sell just because the share price has appreciated.
Its all well and good owing shares in a company that are worth x amount, but if you are getting no return from them they are worthless until you sell them?
I always thought that the whole point of investing (as opposed to trading) in these types of companies was that if you can get in early, you end up owning a lot of shares which one day will pay you a handsome didvidend.

Ok, jv areas sold. Which would potentially increase the share price. But as a long term hold, as in I see Lithium been in ridiculous demand in the twenties, why do I want to make a quick buck by selling things?
I cant see the bod giving out a special dividend on the back of thise sales. It will just be “re invested” and pay iff some old debts and keeps there salaries going for another few years. And they will justify their salaries by saying “look at what we are doing. We sold the jv’s for x amount”. Which have also been stated as been worth between 0 and 15 million (bcn)

So as a former shareholder I have been looking in with interest over the last few days. I almost want to buy in again, but one thing stops me. I asked this question a couple of years ago, and that was “how do shareholders ever get paid”. Kieran Morzaria publicly stated that the plan was to repeat the investment success of BCN and EMH (the share prices of both companies were at all time highs then)by selling them as they neared production so they could be sold at a premium, then they would use their mining knowledge and expertise to repeat the process. So that set alarm bells ringing for me. I originally bought into kdnc because of those investments thinking that down the line dividends would be paid to kdnc, and hopefully some of that passed to me. If they are selling everything, which pays their wages Etc, only to re invest in early stage high risk projects then I do not see how that benefits me as a shareholder. What’s to stop them selling mms at some point in the near future so they can brag about how much money they can make in their investments? You can guarantee none of that profit will filter down to shareholders. It’s not like we saw any of the huge profits from the sale of BCN at 70p or whatever it was they sold them for. If anybody can give an answer I would be grateful!

Your forgetting the offtake agreement worth nearly 200 million a year (for starters) Having the asset in the ground is one thing. We have our product sold. We just need relatively small amount of money to u lock it

Yes. Can u imagine what the re rate will be on Bcn after what has happened at kdnc today. Kdnc own a 10% share of a company who has an oftake (a good one to be fair) but has yet to build a mine (sound familiar?). When finance is sorted we will be able to build the processing plant and mine and be getting revenue from 17500 tons of li carb. At 11000 dollars a ton, that’s some revenue (192.5 million dollars to be excact). I don’t think we will be leaving it too long before we upgrade to 35,000 tons.

I thought this was a company specialising in lithium and rare earths? Why the excitement over iron ore?

Got to tick up again soon. Still can’t believe we are down at these prices. I managed a small top up first thing (which got listed as a sell like many others).
I feel like the guys in The Big Short screaming at the computer amd saying what the hell is going on!
Well, the more its held back, the faster its going to move when it does :-)

Amazing how this share has gone from one of the most quietest on aim, to on the list if hot chat topics within a couple if weeks. And two Rns’s in one day! Not sure if I can take the excitement!
I am not complaining by the way. BCN finally getting the recognition it deserves, and people (apart from instutions are getting the lithum story).
This interview by sd mores of benchmark minerals ties in nicely with them selling down.
https://investingnews.com/daily/resource-investing/battery-metals-investing/lithium-investing/simon-moores-big-investors-turning-down-top-trend/

Exactly Stroga. If you were Hanwa now, having invested at a high price, and want the goods that the company is producing what would you do?
They probably can’t buy shares on the open market as they have one if their guys on the board of BCN, so are probably in a closed period with all this going on.
Funding is very hard to come by in this sector as other companies have found out. If City investers come in under a placing scheme, they have the potential to loose a lot of influence in the company.
Or, underwrite a loan, which they will potentially make a bit of interest on, protect their investment and their influence as a major shareholder, and get to buy the Lithium they need. Win, win,win!