So yesterday we were down to the history of this new technology developed by Geomega that is making the dream of the market, when the title is suspended on the stock exchange .Consob Canadian wants to give it the time to market to acquire the latest news calmly announced by the company in which he says that this technology seems to work very well. Precisely this news .
I do not know if you spend many words on the title now that the reopening of the market will probably be too late for anyone to even think of entering and knowing that the TF readers who already own shares Geomega are (indeed are) in 4 cats. Let's look at it from a more general point of view, what this technology game changer represents the rare earth industry.
Therefore. Rare earths are produced today almost exclusively in China, the mineral can also come from other parts of the world (even though the majority of the active mines today are almost all there, and, paradoxically, the main Bayan Obo, pictured above, is a mine iron where rare earths are only a "by-product") but the facilities that process this semifinished are almost all in China. The conventional method that leads to the production of rare earths in pure form, provides:
- a first step of enrichment ( beneficiation ) to obtain a concentrated mostly concentrated ... from initial mineral, through physical processes,
- then a second phase of hydrometallurgical processes that through the heat and the use of chemical agents focus even more the semifinished product (especially in order to reduce the costs of transportation in China),
- and then comes the third phase, the refinement of the individual elements in pure form, which is precisely the most complicated part (given that the various lanthanides intermingled together in the mix will look very much like property) and which is monopolized by the Chinese (except for the ' plant painstakingly built with delays and problems of all sorts from Lynas Corp in Malaysia, far from their mine that it is saved in Autralia, and the fact that they had to build the facility in Malaysia says a lot). In practice the third stage is to generate a solution in which are dispersed the lanthanides present in the last semi-finished product mentioned above and then subjecting this solution to a long and super-polluting series of encounters with various solvents that gradually seek to capture a single lanthanide at a time by pulling it from the warm embrace of the other 16 "brothers." Building a facility of this kind costs the wrath of God, and for many companies it is more acceptable the idea of selling (obviously a huge discount compared to the value of the finished products) with a mix of semi-finished products to the Chinese rare earths, Lynas who attempted a different way and has built its refinery in Malaysia must have regretted having done so on several occasions ... (This derives observing the chart title in the last three years has dropped from 2.5 to 0.3 Australian dollars).
The main problem with the conventional refining method is the very high environmental cost. Paradoxically, rare earth elements are considered "green" more than any other (or perhaps just behind the battery) due to their applications in many fields of ecological (such as renewable energy and electric cars), but their production with current technologies is detrimental to the environment instead, since pours into tons and tons of waste solutions (those that remain at the end of the refining process), extremely acidic. In China, where they do not care to bear the heavy costs that would treat these liquid waste, cheerfully throw these acid solutions in a landfill that is now a real artificial lake of 10 square km and is likely in the future to contaminate the Yellow River. As if that were not enough even the first two stages of processing of mineral products in the Bayan Obo mine in China have the disadvantage of producing waste material containing radioactive thorium and then, in turn thrown unceremoniously into the environment. Result: Chinese villages where people get cancer with a frequency that is a multiple of the national average and also accuse other serious symptoms, such as loss of teeth.
China has also had a good game in strongly reducing exports of rare earths, forcing many manufacturers of products with rare earths to produce directly to strut in China, demonstrating at least in this, a sense of the national interest (what is lacking in our politicians sold), at least when it comes to the economy (less when it comes to the health of the Chinese-Mongolian living near Baotou). The rest of the world, however, that much has not been able to raise your voice, because, apart from Malaysia, it seems that no nation in the world is likely to harbor rare earth refinery ...
Faced with this status quo, although it is hard to believe that the idea of doing this research has come to a microcap unlucky as Geomega, who almost did not even have the money to buy handkerchiefs with which to wipe away the tears, well, our own heroes have made up his mind to create an alternative technique to conventional solvent-based to produce the lanthanides in the form of pure metal. And in the last two years when the market showed the most hostile to look more like Geomega companies without revenues, have had the courage to spend their pennies put together with small capital increases (which have also put a strain on the price of actions to be absorbed), in technological research of this new process, initially called Pearse Technology, at the time at which it was bought (in exchange for shares Geomega) from Equapolar Consultants Ltd . study also involving scientists and Canadian universities, and then forming joint ventures with German companies even. The market has long ignored the first positive signs, he instead tried very hard choosing the company of prevarication and save time (and money) decelerating the front of the realization of a feasibility study that showed that Montviel could become an economically viable mine also with conventional technologies, a choice that in hindsight it is easy to share.
Yesterday came the news that this technology seems to work. The market was already gasp for reasons that it's hard to explain. Perhaps in no doubt that the technology proves to be good has begun to give the title a potential value that it was a middle ground between the various possible scenarios. Maybe there was some good old insider trading that is not a patent only Italian. Perhaps to make the lion's share in creating attention from the market has been a report of a newsletter which you can find here free (paying subscribers was made to read in advance and then was made public after all, perhaps to gain publicity seen that for a time they had hit upon a title). It is certain that today we ended up with a suspended license at a price that determines a total value of 36 million Canadian dollars (and higher capitalization could be " fully diluted "that is, taking into account the warrants outstanding are convertible into new shares ) and that will probably start the treatments after reopening an even higher level. I think it's a chance for those who are trying to get out now, I think the risk that the technology will prove Geomega bankruptcy in the future we can not yet rule out completely, and then I would not be inclined to accumulate new positions, but I do not think that the actions that I have kept all this time (until a few days ago at a loss) I will hurry to sell them any time soon. If this story ceases to be the preserve of those who already follow and invest in this niche sector, and instead end up on the pages of some newspapers mainstream then they could still get many investors and raise the price to even higher levels, regardless of the fact that in the medium to long term this technology proves to actually working in practice as well as in testing.