‘Lithium offtake talks ongoing’

Source: ‘Lithium offtake talks ongoing’ | The Herald 12 AUG, 2019

Lithium

Tawanda Musarurwa Senior Reporter
ASX-listed mining group, Prospect Resources, says offtake discussions for lithium from its Arcadia project are underway and will continue for the life span of the mine.

This comes as a low iron petalite report from leading market analysis firm Benchmark Mineral Intelligence recently, confirmed premium pricing for the lithium developer.

“Prospect continues to discuss offtake terms with potential customers. Prospect expects that offtake discussions will be ongoing from time to time for the life of Arcadia, particularly in relation to low iron petalite where a world-wide scarcity of supply of this product offers premium pricing potential.

“Bulk testwork on the Arcadia deposit (the results of which were announced on May 1, 2019) has provided Prospect with additional sample products (including low iron petalite (4,1 percent Li2O and 0,04 percent – 0,08 percent Fe) to provide to potential offtake partners for evaluation.

“These potential offtake partners include chemical converters and battery end users, as well as glass and ceramic producers for whom the low iron petalite is a strategic mineral,” said Prospect.

The report has indicated that the Arcadia project can place its lithium concentrates both in the chemical and the glass/ceramic markets, which enables its products to be suitable as source material for almost all end use sectors that use lithium.

Prospect has a number of operations in Zimbabwe, as well as exploration activities in Zimbabwe and the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Prospect’s flagship project is the Arcadia Lithium Project located on the outskirts of Harare in Zimbabwe.

Construction and mine development of the Arcadia project — to be managed by Prospect Lithium Zimbabwe (PLZ) — is scheduled to be completed in the third quarter of 2020, with commissioning from November 2020. The Arcadia Lithium project has been touted as having the potential to become the largest lithium project on the continent.

Based on the proposed 2,4 Mtpa mining and processing operation, the DFS indicates that Arcadia will be a strong financial, high margin project with current forecast Life Of Mine (LOM) revenue of US$2,93 billion and average annual EBITDA of US$106 million over an estimated 12-year mine life.

In 2017, the Government granted the company National Project Status to develop Arcadia.

The project is the largest lithium deposit in Africa comprising 808 000 tonnes of lithium oxide.