"Pattos now have to advise how much of the $5m "Top Up" they...

"Pattos now have to advise how much of the $5m "Top Up" they have placed - As an aside they could offer to do another $4.8m raise to try and get to the total $15m that the company was hoping to get. "

This (your aside), being outside the terms of the Prospectus might be a problem depending on whether AVZ retains enough discretion to raise more equity without a shareholders meeting to approve it. 

Note (24 Jan 19 announcement) that "ASX has granted the Company waivers from ASX Listing Rules .. to the extent necessary to permit the Company to issue shares under the SPP without shareholder approval, on condition that the number of shares issued ... not exceed 30% of fully paid ordinary shares in the Company already on issue".

Depending (I haven't crunched the numbers) on how much of their 7.1 (up to 15%) and 7.1A (another 10%) they've used already (and we haven't the Top-Up result which would be part of that) they might run into a need to get shareholder approval before they could accept "another $4.8 m" if it outside the terms of the SPP. Unless they could get another ASX waiver.

@practisingaccountant
"In AVZ's case, the company decided nevertheless to prepare a Prospectus".

As (pg 3 of SPP Prospectus) says "As the Company's securities were suspended from quotation .. for more than five days n the previous 12 months, the Company (was) unable to rely on the relief granted by the Class Order and, therefore, is undertaking the share purchase plan under this Prospectus.

Hard to avoid the impression that AVZ's previous communications naivete (especially Nigel's) now sees them having to deal with quite a bit more time consuming and expensive red tape. Past mistakes are continuing to make the present harder than it might have been.

A good cash buffer - I reckon about 30 million - enough to allow another season of road building and a good bit of drilling around the near surface high grade stuff at Carriere would make a huge difference about now.

@binwood - I'm interested in what a typical hyroxide plant has to take in in terms of volumes of reagents like sulfuric acid (and any other inputs (not water, electricity) but chemicals that could be bulky and require transporting) to produce say each ton of lithium hydroxide.  If you can point in direction of rule of thumb indicators (volumes of reagents needed to produce volumes of LiOH) would appreciate. If not no probs.