Alberto Arias + Largo’s BoD have been eating out of Vollant hands since commercial independence.
Paul Vollant was hired as Director of Sales & Trading in June 2019. Since then his annual compensation has skyrocketed to +C$1M in 2023 while Largo’s market cap dropped most of its value.
Paul Vollant = another no-skin-in-the game exceutive who is known for willfully misleading the public about the iron ore fiasco. So sad!
May 13 2021
Andrew Wong: Iron ore is sitting around $230 per tonne in China. With iron ore at record levels, what are your options from monetizing the stockpiled ore at Maracs Menchen Mine? Have you been able to sell any more? And what kind of profit do you expect to realize at these prices? Paul, let me hand this one over to you.
Paul Vollant: Yes. Thanks, Andrew. As I mentioned before, since the first iron ore sales in March, we have concluded a couple more with local customers in Brazil. And today, we're in advanced discussions with several domestic and international buyers. From a commercial point of view, we see the current price levels as a real opportunity for Largo to maximize sales and profits from its iron ore product. And really, our goal is to try and seize this window of opportunity as much as possible. So we're working very hard at it.
Aug 11 2021
Andrew Wong: It looks like there was a little bit of iron ore sales this quarter. Can you talk about the volumes associated with those sales and what we can expect going forward? Thank you.
Paul Vollant: Yes. Andrew, we sold limited amount of iron ore this quarter. We had to deliver many sample and trial quantities to various customers in Brazil and outside of Brazil. We're definitely expecting to run that up depending on market condition. As you know, iron ore prices have been quite volatile over the past 6 months. But given prices and market remain as strong as it is today, we're going to continue and increase the sale of this commodity.
Carlos De Alba
So if I may, could you be a little bit more specific on the iron ore outlook for volumes, please? I mean, at this point, you must probably know how much the byproducts from your operations are going to be and given that a lot of investors got quite excited last quarter on this alternative or complementary revenue stream, it will be appreciated if you can be a little bit more detailed in your answer on that.
Paulo Misk
Yes. Thank you Carlos for your question….Sodium is not an element, a material naturally in the iron ore, titanium has potassium like some iron ore from Chile, but not sodium. So the customers are not accepting higher sodium or even low, even below specification. And so they are not accepting to have sodium in their material. They are complaining. For that reason, this blending strategy didn't work. We try to sell our materials directly to China.
However, the lab has been classified as a solid waste, which is the reality. So somehow, which we think it will be easy to sell, considering the high price. We have been giving some discount. But it's not that easy. Maybe some specific customer if we find them but to be frank, I will not count to sell the iron ore this year going forward….