Thanks Gvan for your words and summary in the other place:
"I believe we’ll see the Vittangi project proceed through the remaining regulatory steps. Certain boxes need to be ticked under Swedish law to meet Sweden’s obligations under the Aarhus Convention and ECHR protections on property rights among other things. This doesn’t prevent the Swedish government from prioritising and adopting the plan in a more urgent manner once the review and amendment period is over and CAB submit the plan. However, the process will likely continue to unfold as it has, despite any growing US interest.
I think the Vittangi project will remain EU-centric, while Talga’s future US expansion, driven by growing geopolitical supply chain tensions, will focus on the recycling side as well as using existing and proven battery grade feedstock from within North America. They have the mineral resources, but as Matt Fernley stressed today, the downstream is the important part. Technology, know-how etc. is what's lacking for these other graphite plays and will take far too long to develop without partnership with a company like Talga.
From the recent OTC webinar:
“We’ve got the ability to essentially duplicate what you’re currently getting from Asia, but we can do it from Europe, or within other countries as well by localising to recycled and other natural graphite supplies.”
"We offer reshoring ability. We're not just stuck to one mine in one part of the world."
Talga’s advantage over many other ex-China plays is their stage of development. The engineering, studies, pilot plant etc. have all been completed already. Talga also went down a very different path that would be highly attractive to the US, which is they own their processing technology.
From a previous quarterly webinar:
“We actually don’t use Chinese equipment at all. Which means we don’t have Chinese software, we don’t have Chinese chips, in the same way that Northvolt did and became a bit of a problem in various ways”
“When we have some vehicle companies, and some defence related people come up and audit our place, they go through everything including mining equipment, lab equipment, who’s signing off on calibrating the scales in the lab etc. All has to be from other countries. We use a combination of European and some Asian/Japanese equipment that we developed our own processes for. These are propriety, some of our processes are patented. We use mostly equipment off the shelf, from other vendors used in different industries like food and the pharmaceutical industry... We use the highest quality machinery we get separately and we do not get it from standards Chinese vendors.”
So yes, a great position to be in when you consider how rare this combination is for a producer outside of China."