Our Western Australian hard rock competitors will not be able to compete with AVZ's grade, purity and size, homogeneity and close to the surface deposit which all and all makes it easy and cheap to mine and to process lithium.
AVZ's size and quality has the potential to be a game changer where AVZ could potentially control lithium pricing and supply!
You have only got to go to independent analyses of some of Australia's deposits to realise how uneconomical and inefficient they are to process.
MIN's Wodinga DSO ore:"concentrates selected by most of the selected plants still have problems such as high iron content, low recovery rate and unstable product quality."Zhongtai Securities.go HERE
There is a big shortage of battery grade lithium-ore with the least deleterious elements that is only suitable for new generation batteries, and AVZ has the potential to deliver the mother load. go HERE
I am sure CATL are sweating on the results of our DFS, because they certainly do not have their long term lithium supply secured to meet the enormous amount of lithium required for the contracts(multi-billion) they have been making. The fact that already Lithium Plus with their connections to CATL have taken a stake in us is very significant!
Detailed metallurgical analyses will also be pivotal to potential off takers making a move as was stated in the details from our last metallurgical announcement; I quote.
"Parcels of representative spodumene concentrate produced in themetallurgical test programme will be used to determine, at bench scale,if lithium carbonate and lithium hydroxide can be manufactured fromtypical Roche Dure spodumene concentrates AND WILL ALSO BE PROVIDED TO POTENTIAL OFF TAKE CLIENTS/END USERS." go HERE
The DFS will be the defining and definitive report that will give potentially the green light to off takers and institutional investors on the viability of this project. All ready the 2 mtpa scoping study which was hardly the finished product showed that AVZ had enormous potential going forward with IRR of over 90%! and remember tin/tantalum credits, detailed metallurgicals and updated transport routes were not included which would all go to potentially making AVZ the cheapest deposit to mine! go HERE
Once the green light is given I can see this project to use the companies words being fast tracked very quickly given how much less red tape there is in the DRC to get mining projects off the ground. Also, with a significant DRC goverment stake in AVZ I can see it would be within their interests to get AVZ up and running ASAP!(if Chinese are involved even quicker!) to be right in the sweet spot to take maximum advantage of lithium demand in the coming EV revolution!
