Ann: Orocobre Limited - September 2018 Quarterly Report, page-66

I think the early works are sensible in regards to stage 2 - the construction of ponds and wells with their subsequent filling and concentrating of brines is clearly the critical path for the stage 2 project.

And the ponds certainly don't hurt in regards to providing some more operational flexibility in stage 1. It seems that the overall ratio of pond area to nameplate increases by around 25% at the completion of stage 2
"The pond design for the Stage 2 is 9 square kilometers of ponds. Our current pond system is a little less than 4.5 square kilometers. So we're building redundancy into the design of our new pond system. And just to say a little bit more about ponds, if you look at our capital allocation you can see the wells and ponds are the largest part of what we have to do." (transcript of conference call)

A bit of a question in my mind as to how quickly they can bring the new ponds in to operation for benefit of stage 1 - but I would expect a couple of them to be earning their keep this time next year.