Mark Jensen: Yes, that’s a good question. And that’s, that is really what show €“ why our technology show is €“ is able to be showcased in a very efficient way. When our energy use and our chemical use versus the alternative is a fraction of solvent extraction, we are not using a series of mixtures and settlers, hundreds of them at times, even thousands of the time, we’re using columns. And we’re not using high pressure or high heat within those columns either. So it’s a very efficient form of processing. The cost structure matters, right? Everything matters, but most of €“ what a lot of people don’t realize is logistics matter. So when you’re dealing with commodities, if you’re transporting a raw commodity, halfway across the world to be refined, there’s a huge cost to that lithium spodumene is typically a 6% lithium ore, meaning you’re transporting 94% rock halfway across the world to be purified to a 99.99% pure.
Most people can’t get to that high, we can. But more importantly, we can localize that. So, why Africa has been such a huge opportunity is, there is hundreds of thousands of tons of lithium spodumene that is transported from African nations, to China today to be purified. We have already been testing that material in our facility. And we have already been processing it to showcase what it can do, one, at small scale, but what we have proven is that our technology works as it scales up even better. And that’s because the surface area interface. Basically, the surface area of the resin, so the bigger the columns, the more resin you have the more surface area, which lowers our cost structure. But the ability to localize that and the ability to do it timely meaning we could build a plant and deploy it in three months to six months.
The agreements that we are putting in place throughout different African nations, right now predominantly imports, because then we can process multiple products in multiple mines. That is a big deal. And there is a lot of volume of material that can be processed, and can be processed very quickly. So, I do think that the localization not only spodumene side, but also on the battery manufacturing side of the battery industry is a big deal. If you can offset that transportation costs, take things off the highways that you are transporting back and forth multiple times, you are saving everybody money in the equation. And we have been working with a number of the OEM partners showcasing our technology, and that takes time. I mean everybody wants us to sign an off-take immediately and sort of weep.
We also want to select our partners, and they want to select us and make sure that they feel comfortable with it. Now, we are in third, fourth, fifth, sixth, eighth meeting with certain parties that have seen the technology and including the one that we are co-locating a design facility for them as we speak right now for their facility. So, it’s a big opportunity. Now, I would say the African opportunities, from a revenue perspective are huge. These are big mines that are mechanized mines, these aren’t children, labor, nuts, and there is a misconception of how things are mined over there. And really not fair to some of the attractive opportunities that are over there. But these are big revenue opportunities. I mean the first one we are working on is a pilot program.
It’s an exploration phase permitted 8 million tons of spodumene a year targeting to produce. Their initial production is 35,000 metric tons of spodumene a year under the exploration plan. That’s a big opportunity, a big potential for us and can be substantial revenue right off the bat, and we can build on that pretty quickly. We are working aggressively on that. We have worked on it for almost eight months now and it’s coming to fruition pretty quickly.
