In terms of the AVL comment on electrolyte manufacture and VSun distribution in your post, whilst expending your frontiers outside mining gives you a higher risk, moving into essentially manufacturing elements (i.e. downstream processing) means you also get much higher returns if you succeed.
As a comparison, if you sell a tonne of 6% spodumene concentrate you will roughly get US$900 per tonne now, i.e. what our Australian miners export, but if you decided to produce lithium hydroxide you will get north of US$12,000 per tonne and higher profitability, i.e. what the Chinese do with it, but if went further to lithium batteries well more profit if successful. It is a risk reward equation hence why some lithium producers are now proposing lithium hydroxide/carbonate facilities as well - maximise the profit available, but obviously there is a risk as well. For others, yes I know we have vanadium LOL but just looking at what some lithium players are doing they are seeking to move a little downstream to get even higher benefits but obviously it is a risk/reward equation.
In terms of the other matters raised in the post, looking at the TMT PFS released on 21 June 2018 the following statements are made in italics below - I just typed cobalt and then hit CTRL F and this came up:
"Potential to recover cobalt, nickel and copper from the non-magnetic waste product of the fresh massive materials"
"Ongoing metallurgical testwork assessing the potential to recover cobalt, nickel and copper from the non-magnetic waste product of the fresh massive magnetite material and the scope to recover TiO2 and high quality iron ore from the calcine product."
Looking at the numbers they gave (IRR, calculation methodology) in the PFS it would appear too me all the numbers are around vanadium, with nothing around other mineral values, including reading a summary of the process flow sheet. That is whilst they are doing some testwork on other minerals it is not their focus IMO on what the mine will start producing.
Going to the DFS announcement, dated 7 September 2018,
"The DFS is scheduled for completion in the June quarter 2019."
Doing CTRL cobalt, CTRL Nickel, CTRL copper search over that 7 Sept announcement and reading it as well there are no references that are brought up to recovery of other minerals.
Reading the statements above and just rereading some of their stuff, it would appear to me all TMT's work to date is about recovering only vanadium. Now, if they decide to move to recovering other minerals then the question for me is how much project scope has changed and what is the impact on delivering the DFS in June 2019. Just a guess, but would appear too me there is some other minerals there - just a case of what they want to do with them if they conclude they are commercially recoverable.
Going over to the board on TMT and reading some of the posts there, the flavour I got was TMT is only about getting vanadium now and will seek to retrofit a byproducts recovery system later on. Anyway this is certainly my last post on TMT and AVL comparisons - business strategies IMO are different IMO and therefore I just will stick with my earlier post.
Ok, no intention to talk TMT again in an AVL forum. Happy to go the TMT thread to rabbit on if it helps, but prefer not to.
For other posters, I don't even think this post of mine is relevant to the AVL thread and wouldn't be surprised if the Mod moderates this as "Off Topic" or "Other" or even "Totally Irrelevant".
(20min delay)
