ISSUE #4
JONO KING
FROM UNDERGROUND ROCK TO ANTIMONY OBSESSION
21 MAY
Newsletter
Talks to Rueben Hale
UNDERGROUND ROCK
ummit Minerals boss Jono King talks about his obscure rock and roll history and his even more obscure obsession with antimony as a grown-up
THE LIZARD KING
ur royal reptile spits his bacteria soaked tongue at the Fed debt ceiling ‘hamster wheel’ in his weekly misguide market wrap up
03 MARKET OPEN(ED) BRIEFS
arket Open(ed) gives the short on exciting news from Noronex, Tungsten Mining, and Antilles Gold from the past week.
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CONTENT
S O M
THE LIZARD KING
The debate over the US debt ceiling is creating uncertainty and causing people to worry. Not me. As the debt-ceiling-debate-hamster-wheel revolves again, let the Lizard King be clear: “THERE IS NO CHOICE!”
Lift the ceiling, or the world will implode – simple as that.
Meanwhile, Van Diemen’s quarry continued on the up and up for my darling precious yellow metal, staying over 2 tonnes and Oz US while lithium kept powering despite the Goobs. This week, several high-level executives made a pitch for the good oil. It all began on Tuesday when Woodside CEO Meg Oneil expressed support for carbon-captured oil. The following day, BHP CEO Mike Henry stepped into the fray, doing a stellar job greenwashing its coal with a bright, multicommodity future headlined by the much more palatable copper, nickel and iron ore businesses. Then on Thursday, Chevron dampened Ms Oniel’s spirits somewhat, admitting their flagship carbon capture and storage project is years from reaching its total capacity. Oh lordy!! By the end of the week, this knowledgeable reptile could take no more and slide under a rock. IPO to $10.6 billion ASX superstars, Allkem inspired other hopefuls this week following its historic merger amid a resurgence of the es
sential battery metal. Like I always predicted, the relatively large lithium plunge was just a little pothole along the superlong demand runway highway of escalating demand —the party continues, and the Goobs are not invited!
This week, Lake Resources (ASX: LKE) made significant progress at its Kachi project in Argentina, producing 2,500kg of lithium carbonate equivalents. This achievement is noteworthy as it marks the first time that a lithium brine project in South America has produced lithium commercially without relying on evaporation ponds for lithium concentration. Small Caps had a strong showing overall, with Lake Resources being a standout performer.
Sayona Mining (ASX: SYA) has reported that North America now has the most considerable lithium resources totalling 51.4 million tonnes @ 1.31% Li2O. Imugene (ASX: IMU) has received approval to begin patient recruitment and dosing for a Phase 1 clinical study for their analytics platform, targeting patients with solid tumours. Additionally, MTM Critical Minerals experienced a successful performance on the ASX after entering the Canadian lithium market. This achievement is a testament to their hard work and dedication during a challenging year.
smells like antimony
By Rueben Hale“Iwas a drummer back then, covering things like The Church, Died Pretty, Sunnyboys, The Triffids, etc,” King recalls. He quickly points out they ‘weren’t all hairstyles and funny clothes.’
“We played some shows, but really it was just a group of mates having fun—”I can’t even remember the original name of the Cottesloe pub we played at,” he says, perhaps deciding to play the whole thing down a tad.
Summit Minerals, led by the grown-up version of King several decades on has just gone global after picking up a high-grade antimony project in central Morocco. As an ASX-listed battery metals explorer, they hold many highly prospective assets in New South Wales, perhaps making them the most active antimony explorer in the country.
Additionally, the company is doing well in the rare earth sector and is eagerly anticipating metallurgy results from their Stallion project in Western Australia, which is highly mineralised. According to King, experts commonly say that antimony is the most important critical mineral you’ve never heard of. He says this saying has been around for a while but is now more accurate than ever.
“The advancements made in the Ambri battery technology using low-cost antimony and calcium have made this space suddenly very exciting,” King says.
“The Ambri is a battery with liquid metal electrodes comprising affordable everyday products, is easy to scale up, has a low cost and long cycle life, and doesn’t suffer any of the effects we see from lithium-ion batteries.”
But keep your phone on charge for now! Although there are promising theoretical findings regarding the use of antimony and antimony composites as anodes for rechargeable Li, there is still a need to review their practical commercial application.
“Antimony could have a massive future application within the cathode of large-scale energy collection systems and the grid, it stabilises energy flow from passive energy collection which is fundamental to improving the efficiencies of our power grid,” King explains.
I now understand the importance of antimony, but why are you going to Morocco to look for it?
It is a blessed country and dramatically underexplored with a proactive government very supportive of exploration and mining, looking for foreign investment to grow its GDP. And are also fortunate to have paired with a local explorer who knows the ins and outs and how to do business in-country. They will oversee our affairs and fast-track that, but it will take time to come to terms with the processes. The market got excited about the exceptional drilling results from your Stallion REE Project in Western Australia last month –will Morocco take the focus away?
Stallion is the fast track.
The key for Summit, near-term, is the fortunes of Stallion, where we have drilled rare earth numbers of quite substantial value, targeting a hopefully leachable, ionic adsorption deposit. Given our share price and current market cap, if we show we can grow and leach the potential resource, we could expect to see a dramatic rerating.
But …?
Like everybody, I’ve made mistakes, and you learn from that. One of the critical aspects is that you want to save people’s money. You’re in an expensive industry, the burn rate can be very high, and I don’t like seeing good money wasted.
Jonathan King, better known as Jono King, mucked around in the Perth underground music scene in the early 80s. Now he’s exploring for a critical mineral you’ve probably never heard of either.
Stallion is a good example. We could go out and drill, drill, drill, and drill through the 3 million dollars in our bank account very quickly with an overreaching drill program when we still need to meet the basic economic parameters.
We want to show we can leach it to justify expanding the drill program substantially. That’s where we add value to the shareholder, and there’s only a point in drilling if you show something likely to be viable. OK, back to Morocco – is it just about the antimony,
or is there more?
The big thing about Morocco is that up until around 2016, we viewed it as a phosphate mining opportunity, and even then, it was government controlled. The royal family controlled everything.
Since then, they’ve created a new mining act, very proactive for Western companies to come in and benefit. You have none of the issues you see in the south of Africa. We see a safe jurisdiction with sound legislation recognised by the Fraser Institute. The 2021 survey ranked it the only African country in the top ten jurisdictions.
It gives you an idea of how supportive everything is for companies like us to take on the risk and move forward.
What we love about Morocco is the country is very open, and mineralisation is daylighting. We collected those samples with astounding numbers from one of several historical pits, where antimony was handpicked and bagged. No mobile plant or mechanical tools anywhere to be seen. It’s relatively straightforward exploration, and the skillset in the company is more than adept at dealing with these environments. The big thing about Morocco is we’re dealing with the similar aged systems as those in New South Wales. In terms of the structural controls on mineralisation, from what we have seen, are very similar in Morocco. Everything is related to structure, and we’ve got dilation events happening, volume changes in the rocks, with fluids filling the spaces that are created, and that’s where mineralisation lies. It’s all straightforward, we’re comfortable with the geology, we’re applying similar strategies to what we do in Oz, and we have yet to see any real need to change our perspective, but the proof will be in the pudding once we get to work. And the great thing about Morocco is that you can do the work, even drill in a very timely fashion without excessive red and green tape.
We see a fantastic opportunity for many commodities in Morocco, and we will do whatever we need to see the company grow.
But the price for antimony remains a little uninspiring?
The Seattle music scene was around for quite some time before the world heard Nirvana’s Smells Like Teen Spirit!
“According to King, experts commonly say that antimony is the most important critical mineral you’ve never heard of Did you know?
Antimony is Australia’s most critical mineral
OPEN(ED) BRIEFS
NORONEX HIT THICK COPPER
Chief Geo Bruce Hooper gave the skinny after Noronex shares leapt. The results of the assays from a single hole are very encouraging. They reveal a thick zone of vertically controlled copper that spans over a kilometre long, which could significantly increase the existing copper resource of 10Mt @ 1.3% Cu. The company’s regional tenements have been cleared for drill access, and they are in a prime location with Cupric’s Zone 5 in full production and Sandfire ready to start. This positions Noronex as a critical player in the industry.
TUNGSTEN MINING TAKE A HARD LOOK
Tungsten Mining has received a $1 million grant to advance their Mt Mulgine Tungsten project, which could make them a cost-effective global leader in production. The Chairman, Gary Lyons, has an unwavering belief in the project. With the development of a robust processing flowsheet, the company is gaining more supporters and funding for a Tungsten train with vast critical mineral potential. Its good to see hardening interest in this critical strengthing mineral which could in production soon.
ANTILLES GOLD SEE COPPER
Antilles Gold has discovered a significant scale copper-gold porphyry system through 3D modelling, indicating that they may have a tier-1 copper asset on their hands. A single hole drilled into the outer zone of El Pilar returned a top-level strike of 134m @ 1.23% copper. If upcoming drilling confirms this, it could attract significant attention. El Pilar is set to become its joint venture, and Cuban authorities are considering allowing majority foreign ownership for this large-scale copper play
LITHIUM TO RISE ON EV ACCELERATION
Lithium prices are primed for a dramatic upswing after an influx of projects chasing the allure of all-time highs have not been able to feed the insatiable and accelerating raw supply demands of battery-driven industries.
Prices have been torn down by 70 per cent over the past five months after China cut down on electric vehicle subsidies, but with the EV superpower firmly back in a growth swing, Morgan Stanley is one of the commodity analysts who see the market at an inflection point.
“Sentiment is clearly improving, and their lithium inventories appear to have eroded,” Morgan Stanley commodities strategist Mr van Straaten said.
“The turning point in lithium markets? Yes, it looks like that for now at least.”
Shane Langham, a senior private wealth adviser with Sequioa Wealth, said growth in the sector was far from over.
“I don’t see lithium as a one-off flash in the pan. The demand for lithium carbonate, or battery-grade lithium, is increasing at a rapid rate because of the rate of EV production increases,” Mr Langham said.
Senior portfolio manager at Janus Henderson, Darko Kuzmanovic, agreed that a lithium story of immense growth was one still being told, with EV penetration expected to become more
than 40 per cent of the market by the end of this decade.
“This is a structural and long-dated, decades long theme, that has just begun. Over the last five to six years, lithium demand has fluctuated at a compound annual growth rate of 25 per cent per annum. This is expected to continue until EVs become the dominant type of vehicle,” Mr Kuzmanovic said.
Chinese EV sales have recovered by over half to mark 1.05 million units in March from January, and international demand is rising in tune, with Chinese exports of lithium batteries surging by 94.2 per cent year-on-year.
And the majors have already sprung into action, Albermarle’s $5.5 billion takeover bid was swiftly rebuked by Liontown, who saw the offer as an opportunistic grab in a time of purported market softness, and the US lithium titan has continued to keep its eye on undervalued lithium assets. A merger between Livent and Allkem to become the world’s third largest lithium miner could just be the beginning, Benchmark Mineral Intelligence see the scene being set for a sweeping period of mergers and acquisitions in the industry, a boom similar to the global wave in the 2000’s that saw several Australian mining companies become absorbed into multinational organisations.
