GM and Ford are comingAnother piece of the puzzle has now fallen into place. The selection of the LA site finally confirmed where the initial processing facility will be located and surprisingly included two additional phases to expand the overall production from 2K to 5K to 7.5K tonnes. I expected the Kingston facility to be the "Phase 2" in boosting production above 2K tonnes but it looks like the development of a fully commissioned commercial Kingston facility will be coming later according to the news release.
Total cost is projected to USD75 million but I would expect Phase 1 to required around USD30 million initially give or take. Next piece of the puzzle is the offtake agreements which I expect to fully fund Phase 1. GM and Ford are coming (again this was mentioned by the company but not by name).
I believe that the announcement of a multiple phase development is good news. This indicates to me that there are multiple offtake partners lining up to take up the production capacity (again the company has said a much). The target of the end of 2024 for commercial production is also good news to me too. The potential offtake partners must have requested this aggressive date to meet their own EV production sourcing schedules so they can't waste time negotiating forever either.
Given we are now in April 2023, the company and the offtake partners need to announce something soon in order to meet the 2024 deadline. As usual, watch the stock price and the trading volume. When they start to move up strongly again then we know we are close. Not much time left to procrastinate so get on with it Ucore and whoever you are talking to about offtake agreements.