Minerals – Consensus & Stars Aligning!
Authored By: Tshepo Magagane
Lithium – too many jackanapes making comments who have never deployed capital, let alone developed a project!
1. The Chinese are deliberately making sure that no other capacity is built – the German/Russian case study has emboldened China; they can see how much damage has been done to German industry – like “Pinky & Brain” and Brain going “Pinky, Pinky, Pinky” when he sees his most convoluted ridiculous plan coming together (even with Cobalt**)
2. The only DLE project worth paying attention to is the Exxon one – they have the best resources to have a go at this
Having said that, Iron Ore is the 4th most abundant element on earth, and see how much money was made out of it for 2 decades, It is still being made even post China’s peak steel – those assets were written off in the late 90s!
As I said, Gina Rinehart with permanent capital will look inspired in 5 to 10yrs!
Too many jackanapes who would not even get an internship in “high finance” opining! Jesters chuckling throwing their hats in the air – same as we saw with ESG – when I was going “ESG is just part of fundamental analysis” where are those scorecards people now while we still have to figure out water licenses around projects, how the community gets involved, who the shareholders and mgmt are..ahhh!
Even procurement teams dont have an idea how these markets will evolve – one thing is for sure, others will end up as specialty chemicals!
You dont make money from consensus or when stars are aligned; consensus has to find you there and you have to align the stars…even in my Copper thesis; you need to be doing everything to secure these properties NOW – see the amount of activity at the Tier 1 level in Zambia (Kobold, Ivanhoe, Anglo, Barrick, FQM, Abu Dhabi AND the Chinese) – and the independent projects present that super opportunity for Capital!
PS:
**
Chinese output of Cobalt – my quick desktop view
LoM of Tenke was 32 years.
With that, producing Cobalt at 16Ktpa
They are currently doing a run rate of 55ktpa
I am excluding stockpiles here
That means they are running down LoM to about 9 years
