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101105interview (Lithium Chloride Prices)
101105interview (Lithium Chloride Prices)
Admiralty Resources NL
ACN 010 195 972
11 November 2005
Please find attached the transcript of a Corporate Insights interview done with Brendan Fitzpatrick of
Aegis Equities Research on the 3 November 2005. This interview will be published shortly on the Aegis
website www.aer.com.au .
Yours sincerely,
Phillip Thomas
Managing Director
Admiralty Resources NL
1 of 1
ASX ADY
Bloomberg ADY.AU
Reuters ADY.AX
rd
3 November 2005
Aegis Equities Research Pty Ltd ACN 085 293 910 AFSL no. 225072 Level 6, 33 York Street Sydney NSW 2000 Australia
Phone +61 2 8296 1100 Fax +61 2 9299 3777 Email mail@aer.com.au Web www.aer.com.au
Page 2 of 5
that may happen before the end of the year and they’ve Admiralty Resources MD – Phillip Thomas
given us notice that they may do that. Certainly. Our capital expenditure is going to be in the
order of US$8 million in total. We’ve spent about US$2.5
The other aspect is the loan, that will give us $6 million. million so far, so we’re looking to put in about another
So we’re talking about A$14 million that we can access. US$5.5 million.
We believe our expenditure is only going to be in the
vicinity of about $7 million up until the next tranche from We’ve recently undertaken a fairly substantial engineering
the converting loan which gives us another $10 million. So project and decided to upscale the plant in terms of
we don’t have any further plans to raise capital. If acquisition of more high speed drums, doubling the
anything, we’d be looking to debt, so we don’t dilute capacity of our magnetic separator and changing the
earnings per share. We try to be as conservative as we configuration of the plant to access the iron ore from the
possibly can in issuing capital. four mines that are located close to each other which we
call the Japonesa Group of Mines. Once we’ve got that
Aegis Analyst implemented, we’ve also been working with the port at
Looking into another aspect of the company’s Huasco and another port to the north and we believe we
operations, you recently had your American have basically cut a deal with that second port which will
Depository Receipts approved for trading. Could you be of a major benefit to us and so we’ve chosen to defer
describe the strategy behind creating these receipts? production from what was October now ‘til early New Year.
Aegis Equities Research Pty Ltd ACN 085 293 910 AFSL no. 225072 Level 6, 33 York Street Sydney NSW 2000 Australia
Phone +61 2 8296 1100 Fax +61 2 9299 3777 Email mail@aer.com.au Web www.aer.com.au
Page 3 of 5
alluvial material. So, what we’re doing is basically taking In terms of blending, we’re really blending because we
apart those stock piles in terms of five by five by five have these pockets of very high concentration of iron ore
metre blocks and determine what the iron content is. So, and clearly 4%, 5% and 6% higher than the market
we know exactly what we’ve got where. From our drill requires. So we’ll utilise that material to supplement some
hole work and from a mining engineering point of view, of the lower grade material to come up with an iron ore
we’ve been able to determine which is the most cost content and a sulphur content that suits particular buyers.
efficient and which has got the richest blocks and what we We’ve got very, very low or even non-existent sulphur in
need to take out. some of our iron ores which is in demand by some steel
mills.
Admiralty Resources MD – Phillip Thomas In Chile, the environmental permit process goes from
We’ve had some interest for 65% and 66% iron from digging it out all the way to shipping it. It’s not just at the
Cometals through some of their clients and from them mine site. So we have approval to stockpile 600,000
individually. What we’re looking at doing is we have some tonnes of iron ore at any one point in time at the mine site
very, very high Fe content in some of the magnetite, in and we just finished negotiations with one of the major
some of the alluvial areas, and obviously at Pampa Tololo subcontractors where we’re actually subcontracting out the
and Cerro Varilla, we’re getting very, very high anomalies iron ore extraction process but we couldn’t do that until we
on the basic geophysics work that we’ve done so far. got our environmental permit which we received last week.
Now, we’ll probably start a short drilling program to
determine the depth and concentration and get a better Aegis Analyst
understanding of what the geology looks like and what’s
Perhaps moving on to look at the Rincon Salar
actually happening, so then we can take it further.
projects in the salt lakes of Argentina. The current
Aegis Equities Research Pty Ltd ACN 085 293 910 AFSL no. 225072 Level 6, 33 York Street Sydney NSW 2000 Australia
Phone +61 2 8296 1100 Fax +61 2 9299 3777 Email mail@aer.com.au Web www.aer.com.au
Page 4 of 5
schedule is to begin production in early 2006, is this Admiralty Resources MD – Phillip Thomas
still the plan? Look, we have, but we’ve really designed the plant as the
front end to the lithium chloride production facility. So
Admiralty Resources MD – Phillip Thomas 12,000 tonnes of lithium chloride roughly equates to
It’s 2006 for the potassium chloride and June 2007 for the around 40,000 to 45,000 tonnes of potassium chloride.
lithium chloride and that’s because the second phase of Clearly, we have enormous resources available and
the evaporation is to evaporate our potassium chloride possibly one approach might be to secure another major
once we’ve taken out around 90% or 92% of the sodium contract and use that as a basis to upscale the front end
chloride -- we actually concentrate the brine the first time plant. We’ve designed the lithium chloride facility in two
around. stages. So, one stage is not totally dependent on
another, but it just means that we’ll have more feed stock
Aegis Analyst available for the lithium chloride that we can stockpile, so
to speak, in ponds, because we have got 250 square
Looking at the production, the 40,000 tonnes per
kilometres. We’ve got plenty of space to stockpile it.
annum of potassium chloride, there’s an agreement
recently reached with Rheochem where they will take
3,500 to 10,000 tonnes per annum, and then act as an Aegis Analyst
agent for sale of another 30,000 tonnes per annum. One final question; Admiralty is aiming to acquire the
How reliant are you on Rheochem to secure these Rapé Mine that is currently registered to Graciela
sales and what contingency plans do you have if Comas. A court resolution requested amongst other
Rheochem can’t take the 40,000 tonnes per annum. things that the cadastral survey and the pegging of the
mine was to be carried out by the end of September
Admiralty Resources MD – Phillip Thomas this year and the inscription of the mine in the
There’s a worldwide shortage of potash at the moment provincial registrar of the mining producers by the end
because of its consumption in the drilling industry, in of August this year. Graciela Comas has requested an
agriculture. In fact, we know from some of the trends we’ve extension to these deadlines. Could you clarify this
seen from some of the major manufacturers, potash situation and is Graciela Comas working with or in
corporations and others that we will very easily be able to opposition to Admiralty on this issue.
place that at prices that we entered into or used as a basis
of a memorandum of understanding with Rheochem. Admiralty Resources MD – Phillip Thomas
We’re very confident that we can market that potash at a They work very closely with us and we actually acquired
reasonable profit given that it’s almost a by-product of our the mine and have had that inscribed in ADY Resources’
lithium operation. name and we settled on that mine in late August. So, we
actually completed before 31 August. So those issues
Aegis Analyst became not relevant to the acquisition so we’re now in the
process of engineering and looking at the design of the
Given there is such demand for the product at the
plant and looking at the supply of the various components.
moment and in the current JORC compliant resource
estimates there is around 100 years of lithium chloride
production and 200 years of potassium chloride Aegis Analyst
production. Has any consideration been given to A follow up question; everything seems to be
increasing the production volumes? progressing, so how will the Rapé Mine fit in with the
other operations that have been planned?
Aegis Equities Research Pty Ltd ACN 085 293 910 AFSL no. 225072 Level 6, 33 York Street Sydney NSW 2000 Australia
Phone +61 2 8296 1100 Fax +61 2 9299 3777 Email mail@aer.com.au Web www.aer.com.au
Page 5 of 5
Admiralty Resources MD – Phillip Thomas really an easy way to buy what was a relatively well priced
It’s kind of a separate operation in its own right. It’s really boric acid opportunity to generate some cash flows right
a toe in the water, because 6,000 tonnes of boric acid a away to help us. But also we have about 220 parts per
year is really only pilot plant stage. For example, there is million of boron in the Rincon Salar so that if we manage to
350,000 tonnes of boric acid sold in Brazil, our next door capture a large market share, then we can look at very
neighbour. There’s a smaller consumption in Argentina. substantial resource sitting in the Rincon Salar, prove that
Dow Corning and those that make high temperature / high up and produce boric acid from the Salar.
strength glasses are the major consumers of it, as well as
various other applications. From our point of view, it was
END OF INTERVIEW
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Aegis Equities Research Pty Ltd ACN 085 293 910 AFSL no. 225072 Level 6, 33 York Street Sydney NSW 2000 Australia
Phone +61 2 8296 1100 Fax +61 2 9299 3777 Email mail@aer.com.au Web www.aer.com.au