I think the industry has a tendency to apply standard factors as to where we are in the engineering and what typically the eventual cost would be, plus or minus 50% plus minus 20%. They now seem to apply that well to the project and part of that is this learning curve on the engineering. Part of it has been some pretty significant increase in the cost of things like materials, particularly commodities of moved around steel and other commodities. There certainly been an increase in the cost of certain key, we call them long lead items, but some of the engineered items that are actually in so much demand that the producers of those can barely keep up and as you can imagine in that scenario, the cost of them goes up. And then the final point is, is that the cost of construction and it’s largely a function of time, I think what you see very quickly on these projects is, the longer it takes you to build them very quickly the cost estimates go up.
And it’s not insignificant factor is that projects that people might say take two years to build, if it takes four years to build it, set at two year cost are really going to escalate quickly. So, the sum of that it worked has well and these are not all specific comments on Nemaska. These are broad comments on I think if you look around our industry, the factors that have really driven the increased capital intensity. I don’t see them coming down anytime soon. I don’t see a learning curve benefit anytime soon. Our reduction in some of these factors. I just think we’re now starting to do a better job of understanding that, or describe what the real capital intensity of an integrated lithium project is.
Operator: Your next question comes from the line of a Christopher Parkinson with Mizuho Securities. Your line is open.
Christopher Parkinson: Great. Thank you. Paul, I was just hoping you could give us a little bit more color and slide seven. You kind of had this helpful outlay of both the Spodumene assets and Nemaska’s all hydroxide plants. Just — what’s your degree of confidence in terms of the commercial production dates, and what in terms of your own history and the industry kind of gives you the confidence to put those out there. And how we should be thinking about them and what progress in the investment community should be monitoring over the next year or two to further underscore those in our models. Thank you.
Paul Graves: Thanks, Chris. Look, I think the confidence the competence is highest in block concentrate much higher than it is in the timing of lithium hydroxide. Part of that is just simple, simple process and more advanced. And also, I’m obviously more confident on a 2025 date than a 2026 date. I think 1 of the key variables really to watch out for, for me at least will be the mining we’ve got to get the mine up and running, and I think that will be pretty easy to monitor. And on the lithium hydroxide plant is actually getting it built and getting the commissioning starts of hard rock lithium hydroxide plants don’t start up overnight. I think the commissioning process on that plant will be slower than it would be certainly on a carbonate tyroxadplant, which is relatively quick.
And for us at least, slower than it will be on a brine-based carbonate plant, given the process that we use in the brine-based carbonate. So my biggest uncertainty, frankly, on the lithium hydroxide plant is the pace at which we can start up. And it isn’t just really take me 9 months or 12 months. It will also be how much can I produce during that start to process and what quality it is. So I think 2026 into 2027 is the key window when you need to be watching out for the success or otherwise of that project on the hydroxide side.
