Rio Tinto kicking the tires? Having just had their lithium mine in Serbia trashed, seems likely that Rio Tinto will be sniffing around the PAK project before very long. Rio’s Jadar project in Serbia, had reserves of 118 mt @ 1.8% LiOH2 and was destined to be Europe’s largest lithium mine, but it was located on farmland and as a result, the company was eventually run out of town by the locals. Frontier’s current reserves are about half that (42 mmt @ 1.5% LiOH2) but that’s only their open-pittable resource and doesn’t include any underground mining resource, nor reserves from their Bolt and Electra pegmatites, both of which appear to be monsters, as well, but have yet to be drilled. The Serbian project was also a more complicated underground mining scenario, with higher capital costs, compared to the easy-to-mine open pit resources at PAK. Rio is already well-experienced in mining Canada’s north. via their Diavik diamond mine, but guess what; Diavik is shutting down in 2025, which will leave a whole wack of mining equipment and experienced personnel looking for a new project, at exactly the same time when construction will be underway at PAK.
Another situation I hope investors are aware of, is the Watay power project. This is an indigenous-owned utility that is currently constructing a high voltage powerline to provide green hydropower to 17 remote native reserves located in this region. Check out slides 16 and 17 of the company’s corporate presentation, which show a construction camp for one of the substations, located only 10 km from the mine site. Presumably, Watay will be the power provider for the mine and the construction camp will be turned over to Frontier when the power line is finished in 2023-24. This is exactly the scenario that has just unfolded at Generation Mining’s Marathon project also in Northern Ontario (see their press release from yesterday). Also note that Bart Meekis, former band chief at Sandy Lake first nation, is on the board of directors of Frontier Lithium.
My prediction; Rio Tinto will make a strategic investment in Fl, shortly after the revised PFS comes out this fall. The market price for lithium hydroxide is currently about four times higher than the value they used in their previous PEA ($13,000/t).
The Mookster