You've gotta understand that pilot stage is the stage before...

You've gotta understand that pilot stage is the stage before commercialisation.  If you take the traditional route, you've got 12 months construction, an 18 month startup plus an 18 month ramp up.  Now why wouldn't a company invest in piloting a process over 12 months and still come out 12-24 months in front of everyone building ponds?  This blind faith in a process designed to recover potassium, not lithium, lithium is a bolt on at the back, that only achieves 50% recovery of the lithium sounds like a good way to piss away 50% of a world class project.  On top of that they're not exactly a dream to start up, just ask ORE or GXY who finished their feasibility study almost 6 years ago and GXY now proclaim to be looking at these other technologies.Just to be clear, the new technologies are only replacing the potassium process, the lithium back end is roughly the same, except for the lack of need to remove boron via SX anymore.  So they're only replacing a process not designed to recover lithium.  I'm baffled as to why everyone is so in love with such a bad process.