lithium will rocket again

Lithium collapsed in 2023 and continues to fall to unsustainable levels. What’s happened, and crucially, what happens next?

I think it’s important to take a macroeconomic look at what’s going on with lithium — and whether there may be brighter horizons in the near term.

During the pandemic, and let’s face it years before that, billions of dollars, pounds, euros et al were printed to stimulate the markets after the 2008 Global Financial Crisis — compounded with more than a decade of sub-1% interest rates — and huge Chinese state subsidies on manufacturing.

The natural consequence was that capex-heavy activity in the EV space became very affordable and electric vehicles went from a quirk in 2019 to a growing mainstay of the auto economy a couple of years later. For context, circa 60% of lithium mined is destined for EV batteries.

Of course, some perspective is important: 2022 saw EV sales exceed 10 million — globally 14% of all new cars were electric, up from 9% in 2021 and 5% in 2020. 2023 will likely see similar growth. But the vast, vast majority of cars on the road currently are still traditional ICE vehicles — and rapid EV growth has to an extent been a symptom of ultraloose monetary policy and specific subsidies.

But at points during 2022, Tesla’s market capitalisation superseded every other auto manufacturer combined. Then came the pandemic hangover and Ukraine War — where multiple countries briefly hit double-digit inflation, forcing monetary policy to respond via quantitative tightening and rate rises.

Rates rose sharply, the money taps were turned off, and the rEVolution came into question. But even into late 2022, SP Global was still bullish on the silvery-alkali metal. However, when a bubble rises, it must also pop. 2023 saw prices collapse by almost 80%, now to levels last seen in mid-2021.

Other than monetary policy, what happened?

Actually, that’s the biggest problem.

Let’s consider the legal environment: the UK has pushed back regulation to force auto makers to make only EVs from 2030 to 2035. Similar legislation is in place across the developed world, but the reality is that whether in the US where the Federal target is for 50% of news cars to be EVs from 2030, or in Australia where there is a much woollier fuel efficiency target — you cannot decarbonise the globe on expensive money.

Infrastructure costs alone are incredible — consider the US Inflation Reduction Act — Goldman Sachs puts the true cost of subsidies alone at $1.2 trillion, and with rates where they are US national debt is ballooning to unsustainable levels.

General Motors, LG Energy, Honda, Ford, and others have all dramatically scaled back EV plans, essentially because rising rates have both increased the cost of manufacture, and also reduced consumer appetite. This has created a global supply glut for the metal — and Benchmark 

Mineral Intelligence considers that the deficit will not return to 2028.

Away from EVs, Orsted — the world’s largest wind farm developer — has abandoned US offshore wind projects — Ocean Wind 1 and 2 — tanking a $4 billion hit because the economics simply no longer added up.

The other problem child is, of course, China. In January 2023, the Communist country scrapped a huge EV subsidy that had been in place for a decade. Of course, the major players in the industry knew beforehand, so stocked up on lithium while the subsidy was in place — ironically paying more than if they had simply waited for the price reduction over 2023.

However, China and by extension Chinese companies, value supply over price. You now have a situation where these stockpiles are being used up instead of Chinese companies ordering lithium from suppliers. And because demand for EVs in China is temporarily lower due to the removal of subsidies, slowing growth, and the higher cost of money, suppliers are neither having so sell at very low prices or stop production.

Indeed, CATL knew what was coming —offering discounts on batteries to Chinese EV manufacturers a month later, giving them a huge cost edge over competitors. This came with an in-built assumption that lithium carbonate prices would more than halve over 2023.

Remember, there is no private finance in China — the entire country is controlled by the Communist party. While the state had no control over western interest rates, it carefully removed subsidies to make lithium production unviable — driving share prices and offtake possibilities lower.

Once Chinese companies have secured offtake agreements — see Ganfeng and Pilbara — or JVs/buyouts with every operator from Africa to South America on its terms, it will reintroduce the subsidies as rates come down, having bought assets/production rights at the rock bottom.

The western boom and bust mining supercycle is not set up to deal with this.

However, while BMI is a very good source of information, I am not sure they have considered what happens when the price you can fetch for spodumene on the market is less than the cost of manufacture.

For context, SC6 is fetching circa $1,000 per ton, with low-iron higher grades perhaps as much as $1,600. Higher cost operators such as Core Lithium are already putting plants into care and maintenance — while larger operators including Albemarle and SQM are stockpiling the metal and reducing expansionary efforts.

What does this mean? Well you might argue that when lithium prices recover, these opex-heavy operators will jump back online, while the majors will sell their stockpiles, keeping a lid on the lithium price. And you’d be right. However, as we know, in 2022 there was nowhere near enough lithium supply for demand — and if that demand comes back as rates start to subside, you will be right back to the status quo.

With one difference.

It can take a decade to go from lithium discovery to operating mine. And all the new mines that were due to come online on the back of Definitive Feasibility Studies that had lithium at a huge premium to today’s price are now being paused for development.

This will leave China still in control of the lithium market when the bull market returns. If there weren’t enough projects before, what happens when development is paused on the new projects that analysts assume will be online and will instead simply be cancelled?

The other factor to consider from 2023 is the advancement of alternative battery solutions, or hydrogen. I believe hydrogen will be a contender in future years — though infrastructure requirements mean it will take years from now to be an issue. I don’t think sodium can contend 

with lithium for basic chemical reasons — lithium is the lightest and most conductive metal.

If you want to predict the long-term lithium scenario, then consider this:

Goldman Sachs has been reasonable accurate in its forecasts. For 2024, it expects to see SC6 average $1,250/tonne ($250 a tonne more than present). However, it’s expecting a small decline at the start of 2025 before rising thereafter.

Rio Tinto has forecast a 945% uplift in lithium demand over the next ten years — and we know that supply, which is already based on forecasts from when prices were higher AND with a much higher project success rate than is realistic — is starting to fall.

AustralianSuper — the largest pension fund in Australia worth US$200 billion — plans to double its holdings in ASX lithium stocks over the next five years. Manager Luke Smith notes that ‘the biggest opportunities for us as investors at AustralianSuper is when the prices are at cycle bottoms…we’re seeing now the opportunity become more attractive.’

The fund increased its stake in PLS to 6.12% a couple of weeks ago, and currently holds AU$1 billion of ASX lithium stocks. It expects supply issues to re-emerge over the longer term, taking a view of ‘what will happen over the remainder of the 2020s’ rather than a short term mindset.

Then there’s IFM Investors — another ASX superduperfund, owned by 17 Australian superfunds. It’s planning to invest £10 billion into UK renewable energy infrastructure by 2027.

The bottom line is that investment banks like Goldman work on 12-month timeframes. The majors like Rio work on ten year timelines, and pension funds — like the Chinese — work on multi-decade timelines.

Then there’s the Ellison-Rinehart machinations to consider. Mineral Resources, Liontown, Alita Resources and all the shenanigans ongoing are designed to consolidate control over the entire lithium industry. For context, Liontown shares have collapsed by nearly two-thirds since Rinehart blocked its multi-billion dollar takeover by Albemarle — and the billionaire has lost an extraordinary paper sum in the process.

But neither she nor Ellison care about paper losses. They want to control the industry because they know what’s coming. Oil and gas will start to run out eventually, and lithium’s basic chemical properties cannot be replicated.

Right now, it’s uranium’s time to run. But lithium will shine again — and lithium companies simply need to survive the next 12-18 months. Because the lithium market is tiny, and when demand returns, supply will not keep up.

The last ones standing will rocket.

Criteria: LSE, Africa, Lithium

There are some important reasons why I prefer to invest in the LSE-listed companies, rather than perhaps more popular offerings on the ASX or TSX.

Consider three ASX-listed lithium explorers in Africa: AVZ Minerals has lost its license for Manono and has been suspended for well over a year. Leo Lithium’s Goulamina has been hit by Malian regulatory changes, with shares falling by 50%, and Lepidico’s Namibian Karibib Project is burning through cash faster than a gap year student on a Thai beach.

The ASX companies exploring in Australia tend to do extremely well as the Tier-1 jurisdiction boasts excellent infrastructure, masses of qualified people, and a solid domestic investor base — but those investors continue to get burnt in African lithium — for a variety of reasons.

TSX/CVE companies have a different interpretation of the same problem. There are plenty of excellent opportunities in Canada, so investors in North America would rather stay out of African lithium — leaving companies like Li3 undervalued compared to if they were on AIM.

Then there’s the African aspect. Consider Atlantic Lithium’s Ewoyaa Project, which should eventually have a production capacity of 365ktpa. This is comparable to Mt Holland in Australia — and yet in terms of valuation, Ewoyaa is valued far lower.

Predominantly, this is because of the increased regulatory risk in Africa — which serves to allow 

juniors to discover some monster assets, and investors to buy shares with a view to generate exceptional returns.

This can only be a very basic overview, but for simplicity:

There’s not enough.

Do you want a recent example? China recently auctioned off exploration rights to two potential lithium sources with literally no evidence of lithium in the ground. The closing bids ended up 1,300x the opening bid, with over 8,000 bids by the end of the process.

Lithium is not like iron, or gold, or oil. There’s not enough to go around.

If every new car in the world is going to be an Electric Vehicle by 2040, and the world is going to be powered by electricity-based renewable energy, then even if every single source of lithium we have right now started to be mined, it still wouldn’t suffice to meet anticipated demand.

And when demand exceeds supply, prices rise.

Here’s a fact: the International Energy Agency considers that EVs require six times as many minerals as conventional ICE cars. And the same body advised in 2021 that demand for lithium could grow as much as 30x by 2040.

GM, Volkswagen, BMW & Ford all plan for all their new car sales to be electric by 2030. In 2022, market leader Tesla delivered circa 1.3 million vehicles — but 85.4 million vehicles were manufactured in the year overall.

Tesla et al are already scrabbling for supply, but we haven’t really even got started yet. Kelley Blue Book data shows that sales of EVs rose by 45% in the US — and in China, sales leaped by 55%, in 2022.

And that’s just the EVs. Global Net Zero by 2050 needs far more lithium than just that powering cars. 90% of grid energy storage worldwide uses lithium-ion batteries.

Then there’s the supply chain crisis. I’m not sure if you’ve noticed, but the trade spats between the US and China are growing — spy balloons, iPhones, critical minerals, semiconductors, Ukraine…and it will only grow.

Now here’s the fun bit — China controls virtually all of the lithium processing and is building plants to process far more than it already is. It controls 76% of lithium battery cell production and also holds a market-leading position in lithium refining.

But the country imports most of the lithium it processes from the lithium triangle in South America, alongside select locations in Australia, and is only now really starting to get some out of its African investments.

This poses a problem, because if (for example), Australia stopped exporting to China in favour of the US or domestic processing, the Chinese battery economy would crumble. For context, Australia’s Resources Minister Madeleine King has already said tax breaks for lithium and other critical minerals projects are ‘on the table’ after Tesla’s Chairman urged the country to offer tax credits to producers.

However, there’s nowhere near enough processing capacity elsewhere to match China, which has been ahead of the game for some time. The West is trying hard to catch up (see below), but it will be years before this processing is all online — and even then, it’s nowhere near enough.

The US Inflation Reduction Act now provides tax incentives of up to $7,500 for the purchase of new EVs built in the US, Canada, or Mexico through 2032 (there’s a reason why Mexico has overtaken China as the US’s largest trading partner).

In the US, Biden:

• plans to have half of all new cars be electric by 2030
• started a $3.1 billion plan to boost domestic battery production
• is building 500,000 EV chargers
• invoked emergency Presidential powers under the 1950 Defense Production Act, ‘to reduce our reliance on China and other countries for the minerals and materials that will power our clean energy future’

Moreover, half of the $7,500 tax credit requires 40% of metals in an EV battery to come from either North America or a US free trading partner, increasing to 80% by 2027. For context, Albemarle has the only major operating lithium mine in the country. This creates huge financial incentives for AUS producers to send lithium to the States instead of China. Europe and India are planning similar incentives.

Further, the other half of the tax credit relies on 50% of battery components being made in North America, rising to 100% by 2029.

And the problem China has is that its demand for critical minerals, including lithium, is already far higher than its domestic production capacity. Africa and Canada are essentially the only untapped reserves — the lithium triangle and Australia have been mined for years, but African sources have barely got started. Meanwhile, Canadian sources will be used in North America; look at how Canada forced three Chinese companies to divest stakes in lithium companies last year.

Indeed, carmakers are getting so worried that they are all signing up to direct supply contracts with third parties, or even getting involved in investing in mines themselves. For example, Ford has deals with SQM, Albemarle and Canmax — to not only develop processing plants together, but also to get direct offtake agreements.

For context, lithium from PREM’s Zulu Project could well be taken by Canmax to the joint Ford/CATL processing factories in China OR in the USA (remember that Canmax and CATL operate are arguably the same company wearing different hats).

But the key thing is that all these contracts rely on each other. Ford sells EVs, and takes some of that revenue and gives it to Canmax, which gives some of that revenue to PREM. But with any breakdown along the supply chain, nobody will be making anything.

Of course, Ford’s not the only one at it — Tesla has a three-year deal with Ganfeng, Volkswagen is planning a ‘full ecosystem of suppliers,’ and Renault has signed agreements with a handful of suppliers. The list is practically endless.

Then there’s the mining employment crisis. McKinsey notes that there has been a 39% decline in young talent joining the industry in the US, rising to 63% in the US (compared to the mid-2010s).

Right now, there is enough lithium capacity for anticipated demand until circa 2025 (interestingly coinciding with when Pilbara et al are planning to move to their own processing). 

This rises to 2030 if you assume that enough lithium recycling operations come online.

But even if you assume that every single new lithium mining project that the industry regards as economically and technically feasible goes into operation, McKinsey research shows that lithium supply by 2030 will STILL fall 4% short of demand by 2030 (circa 100,000 metric tons of lithium carbonate). By 2035, this supply gap is projected to rise to 1.1 million tons, or 24% less than demand.

For context, in 2021, the shortage gap — the difference between copper mined and demand — came to just 2% of production, enough to push up copper prices by 25%.

And no — despite the media frenzy, the old volcano at the McDermitt caldera in the US may not be the market-changing discovery analysts think. It might be geographically close to the 13.7 million-ton Thacker Pass but researchers are basing their 120 million ton estimates (and 2026 mining start date) on lab work only.

Not one single drill has broken the surface — and as geologists know well, theory and practice are ugly twins. There’s also almost certainly going to be a contaminants issue — and then there’s the environmental and Native American issues to consider.

You cannot directly invest in lithium, or the underlying commodity. Lithium is very different to other commodities. Like uranium, it is extremely reactive and usually has to be stored in an inert substance, often oil. It’s extremely expensive to mine, store, and transport.

In addition to this issue, lithium from different sources is non-fungible. Fungibility essentially means that all of a certain item are mutually interchangeable; one pound sterling can be swapped for another, or one Bitcoin can be swapped for another — they are both fungible.

Gold and copper are also fungible — you can mine gold in an Australian mine, pan for gold in a river in the US, or dig a nugget out of a field in Africa, and the gold will be chemically close to identical.

By contrast, different sources of lithium are non-fungible, leading many analysts to characterise the silvery-alkali metal as a ‘speciality chemical’ rather than a commodity.

Lithium comes from three primary sources (excluding recycling):

• Lithium-rich brine — a concentrated saltwater solution, found where ancient seas have evaporated over millions of years leaving behind concentrated lithium salts. The most significant deposits are found in the South American lithium triangle, covering Argentina, Chile, Brazil, and Bolivia.
• Lithium-bearing pegmatite — an igneous hard rock formation (spodumene is the usual lithium-bearing mineral found in pegmatites). Significant deposits are found in Australia, DROC, and Zimbabwe.
• Lithium clay deposits — which hold lithium minerals such as jadarite and hectorite. This is less popular, but a notable deposit is the Jadar deposit in Serbia.

As you can see, not only are there three different types of deposits, but there are also different types of lithium-bearing minerals, from which you extract different types of lithium.

The two key types of lithium sold at the market are:

• lithium carbonate
• lithium hydroxide

Lithium hydroxide is the ‘premium’ product that the market wants. While lithium is used in dozens of products from antidepressants to heat resistant glass, the vast majority is used and will be used within batteries for EVs.

The market wants lithium hydroxide because, for complex chemical reasons, it’s far better for battery manufacturing than lithium carbonate.

Lithium extracted from spodumene, and other hard rock sources, can usually be turned into either carbonate or hydroxide, while lithium extracted from brine must first be turned into carbonate before being converted into hydroxide.

This is the reason why China wants lithium from Australia and Africa — domestic Chinese brine-sourced lithium from Sichuan is costly to process into battery-quality products. Spodumene lithium requires one round of processing, so is much cheaper.

It’s worth noting that there are huge technological strides being made in an attempt to bridge this gap, but the fundamental chemistry means that at present, hard rock producers’ costs are less than half that of brines — and deliver a product that is cheaper to manufacture into batteries.

This explains the power that Australia has in the lithium market — while it has less lithium than in the South American triangle, virtually all of Australia’s lithium is derived from spodumene — and China remains relatively happy to buy at premium prices.

Spodumene concentrate 6 (or SC6), is a high-purity lithium ore with circa 6% lithium content, produced as a raw material. SC6 quality can be as low as 5.5%, but not lower.

It generally takes about 7.5 tonnes of SC6 to create one tonne of lithium hydroxide. Hydroxide sells for circa 10-11x more than SC6, so there is a healthy profit margin for large-scale processors. SC6 is commercially valuable because it is currently scarce, and the higher purity means a processor can create more lithium hydroxide more economically.

The takeaway is that if you are looking for the best battery-grade lithium, it’s SC6 from a hard rock mine. Lower grades, such as SC4, are not worthless — but higher processing costs to get the correct hydroxide quality cut into margins, and the end result is often simply not as good.

Of course, this is only half of the equation.

Here’s how it works — remember this is a relatively basic overview as overly technical language is unlikely to be of much use to readers. If you happen to be a mining engineer, I’m sure there’s a lot of detail missing.

There are two main grades of spodumene concentrate:

Chemical, used for batteries — <0.8% Fe2O3, SC5.0-SC6.0

Technical, used for glass/ceramics — 0.15% to 0.5% Fe2O3, >SC6.5

Fe2O3 is the symbol for iron oxide, while Li2O represents lithium oxide.

Obviously, African miners care about the chemical grading as they are selling to battery manufacturers, meaning that the iron content is just as important as the lithium. Let’s take two deposits:

The first is Li2O at 1.0%, Fe2O3 at 1.5%, and a recovery rate of 75%. If you want SC6, you will need 8 tonnes of ore because 8 x 1.0% = 8.0%, but only 6.0% given the 75% recovery. The problem is that you would also have to deal with 12% of Fe2O3.

The second is Li2O at 1.0%, Fe2O3 at 0.5%, and a recovery rate of 75%. If you want SC6, you will still need 8 tonnes of ore, but you only have 4% Fe2O3.

Converters will accept ore with higher iron content, but the iron produces clinkers when the spodumene is roasted when being converted to lithium hydroxide — and the more clinkers there are, the more expensive they are to remove, as when you remove the clinkers you also remove some of the lithium content.

It’s a similar story with mica and other contaminants — you can use magnetic or spiral separation to get some of the contaminants out before shipping, but at some point, too much iron in the deposit makes it economically unviable.

A good example of when the iron content will be too high to be worthwhile is if you plan to extract lithium from a volcanic deposit (see above). I would wager that the new super discovery will have too much iron. It’s simple geology.

Of course, before you can start talking about contaminants, you need to also grasp the concepts of traditional Dense Media Separation and flotation techniques.

Dense Media Separation is actually very easy to understand — it works by separating out minerals based on their density (heaviness). For example, spodumene has a density of 3.11g/cm3, while quartz is 2.64g/cm3, iron oxide is 5.24g/cm3 etc.

Initially, the ore is crushed to free spodumene from other waste materials and then placed into a DMS cyclone with a heavy liquid separation liquid (the idea being that a material whose specific gravity is less than the liquid’s will float and a material with a greater specific gravity will sink).

The liquid usually has a density of 2.9g/cm3, such that as the cyclone spins, the heavier materials sink through it and lighter materials rise through it. Incidentally, this is why larger spodumene crystals are better, because they can be separated from waste with less crushing, which is cheaper. Smaller crystals need to be crushed within a ball mill and sent through to floatation.

Problems start when spodumene can’t be liberated from waste, because the density of the combined material means the spodumene you want will float out into the waste pile.

Four products are generally created using just DMS:

1. High grade spodumene concentrate

2. Waste product (quartz, feldspar, and various rubbish)

3. Intermediate product containing spodumene and waste

4. Small ore particles that can’t be processed using DMS

Dealing with the third and fourth types of product means hugely elevating extraction and profitability — you do this using floatation.

How does this work? The intermediate product and also the finer particles (3+4) are ground into fine material using a ball mill, increasing the surface area of the particles to make separation easier for the next steps. This ground ore is mixed with water and chemicals — including frothers, to create a stable froth on the surface of the flotation cell, and collectors which selectively bind to spodumene particles.

This slurry is then sent into flotation cells — either mechanical cells which force collector-coated spodumene to bind to air bubbles, or column cells where the air bubbles capture spodumene as they rise through the slurry to the surface. This creates a froth layer on top, which contains all the valuable material, which is then skimmed off, collected, and dewatered through filtration or centrifugation.

Hopefully, you then have your delicious SC6.

Of course, ore sorting can take this all a step further. I’ve gone into this in detail elsewhere, but typically you can add XRT (or NIR, colour etc) sorters from Original Equipment Manufacturers like Tomra or Steinert — or have them professionally integrated by engineers such as STARK or Consulmet.

XRT sorting works based on the principle that different materials absorb X-rays to varying degrees. For example, lithium-bearing ores absorb X-rays differently from waste materials. XRT sorting equipment distinguishes between valuable and worthless material, like how a doctor can distinguish bone through soft tissue on an X-ray scan.

Waste rock liberation through XRT sorting targets the higher density of waste rock, which sees waste removed from the material, improving the ore grade being fed into subsequent units. 

You can take this one step further through UV laser sorting, where the sorters can directly ‘see’ the spodumene. It requires the spodumene to be well liberated but usually achieves larger mass reductions and lower losses.

The process exploits the intrinsic chemical properties of spodumene (the unique UV fluorescence of its crystal lattice impurities), which is a clear difference from waste rock. UV lasers and sensors are used to scan ore particles, creating raw images of processed material.

The tech then merges the raw images to classify the ability of an ore particle to fluoresce within a pre-set range. On site, an ore particle that can fluoresce shows up green from multiple angles, while other materials will appear grey — and it’s a combination of these different technologies that can get the highest grade out of a deposit.

While there are efforts being made to create mass-market hydrogen-powered cars, these will likely take many years to come online. It is true that some EVs still use nickel, as lithium shortages and the expense of manufacture make the metal much cheaper to use.

However, neither nickel nor any other element is likely to replace lithium. If you assume that the EV revolution is unstoppable — and not everyone agrees with this — then only lithium will work. 

Even though nickel batteries last for more charging cycles and can be recycled profitably, the chemical reality is essentially impossible to change.

For context, the UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs shows demand for electric vehicles Li-ion batteries increased from just 19 GWh in 2010 to 285 GWh by 2019. And demand is set to soar further to 2,000 GWh by 2030, representing 8% of the global energy supply. 

Lithium is the least dense metal and by far the most effective for conducting electricity. Lithium-ion batteries charge much faster, and their maximum charging capacity is less affected after each charge.

Nickel has almost half as much energy density, so altogether this means much more is needed to power an EV. It also gets hot quickly so can only operate with a cooling system — another weight problem.

So whatever technical advances come along in the battery arena, the fundamental chemistry is not going to change. Instead, companies may choose to use nickel for some applications, and sodium-ion or hydrogen for others. But these simply cannot replace lithium as the best mineral for EVs.

As more producers come online and traders clamour for a way to lose money quickly, it’s essentially inevitable.

For context, oil is now thought of as fungible and therefore it is very easy to trade oil in myriad different ways. However, in practice, different types of oil vary hugely in chemical makeup, grading, sulfur, viscosity, lightness, sweetness, refinement needs, and usability.

Consumers can blend different grades to achieve a desired standard mixture, and benchmark prices have created an integrated pricing structure in the international markets that means most view one barrel of oil as good as any other.

As lithium gains in popularity, it’s not hard to see an enterprising individual looking to set up a spot ETF that somehow tracks lithium similar to Yellow Cake’s tracking of uranium. Further forward, money always finds a way.

There are plenty of AIM lithium stocks to choose from, but we like those:

• based in Africa
• with a strong Joint Venture

At present, the two strongest companies in the space appear to be Atlantic Lithium (which has seen multiple bids from shareholder Assore) and Kodal Minerals, which has ambitious plans to be producing during Q4 2024.

Atlantic owns the Ewoyaa licence in Ghana, and has Piedmont as its JV partner. Meanwhile Kodal's flagship is Bougouni in Mali, in JV with Hainan Mining.

In addition, Mila Resources appears a high value risk play for its exploratory JV with ASX major Liontown.