Full Circle Lithium has strategically positioned itself with a team who has 70-years of experience. Armed with a diversified portfolio of feedstock, Full Circle Lithium has up to 2,000 tonnes of capacity which it plans on filling before expanding. The company also has proven track record from raw materials and lithium by-product stream to battery grade L-C.
Carlos Vicens, the CEO of Full Circle Lithium is with us to answer some questions.
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TMH: I know the company has an early mover advantage in the lithium recycling processing industry, but you also have a 3-pronged approach. What is that approach exactly?
CV: We have a three-feed stock approach to supply, so what we call our upstream part of the business, which feeds into our lithium carbon plant that you just mentioned in the state of Georgia in the US. The idea of our three-feed stock approach is to diversify our feed, make sure that we’re not focused on just one feed stock, which may or may not be enough in the market or be too expensive at any specific time and also work on short, medium and long-term types of feed. Our three types of feed that we currently are working on today are the lithium battery recycling, the midstream feed stock, recycling of industrial and chemical lithium bearing streams and lastly, we’re also working on our lithium refinery business which is focused on mining upstream assets and delivering processing solutions to mining assets whether in the US or Canada. All these feeds are distinct in terms of size of the market, size of potential customers and returns and this is a good thing. We plan to continue to expand potential markets depending on where we see growth, but we are nimble, we have a small team, and we can adapt and pivot, if necessary, within these markets or any other new one that we create within the lithium processing industry.
TMH: What was the main reason the company decided to go public?
CV: Correct. Our main reason to go public is to access capital for growth and to have the potential to use our shares as currency for either an M&A or any other partnership opportunity that we see in the market today. When you are private, it makes it hard to point to evaluation without having a market to support it. So, it’s a double-edged sword when you go public, but we have done this before, and we are confident in our ability and our strategy moving forward. When we were private, we were able to raise around $5 million Canadian to restart and refurbish our plant in Georgia, but we need more capital to deliver on our strategy and accessing feed and building our plant and strategy. So, at that point is when we decided to go public.
So, to be clear now that 5 million we were able to restart our lithium carbon plant that you mentioned with our up to 2000-ton capacity and also refurbish the majority of the plant in office, as well as building a demo plant for our midstream feedstock recycling business as well as other ancillary supporting infrastructure. This in itself is a significant accomplishment for our operating and plant team. When we decided to go public, we did a concurrent financing of approximately $10 million Canadian and as you mentioned we should be trading on Monday May 1st. So, one week from today approximately. The ongoing and almost go public process also has a couple of never-ending kind of paperwork but we’re there, we’re excited to go public and for all of us, this is our third successful go public lithium vehicle for our team, which is important for our investors to understand. We’ve been part of the Lithium Americas go public and the Neo Lithium go public, which was both very successful and in itself. Myself, including this one with First Circle Lithium, I have been involved in NEO and obviously for Full Circle Lithium and we envision and expect Full Circle Lithium to be very successful going forward.
TMH: Do you foresee certain challenges arising after becoming publicly traded and if so, how will the corporation maneuver around them?
Client: Well, every company has challenges in their strategy of course but we look at them a little bit different. We look at as a potential opportunity to differentiate ourselves from our competition. The main challenge for all lithium processing, manufacturing and the recycling business is feed. How do you access that feed? How much will it cost and how much would it cost you also to process that feed into a final product that you can sell into the market. For our part, as mentioned before we have decided to diversify our feed from three different sources, which is a positive. This makes us unique in the market. No other recycler does this. Also, our approach to processing and manufacturing are bottoms up. So, meaning we try to understand the process very intimately and we don’t leave any loose ends for us to really make a movement on that side. We’re also working on several IP patents for some of our process to make sure that we’re protected as we advance our strategy.
TMH: I know the company has proven processing techniques with a green footprint. What was the initial push behind doing so?
CV: Our primary focus is on recycling lithium, plain and simple and if possible and available, we’ll also recycle other high purity battery metals, but main focus will always be lithium. We have built a proprietary front end lithium extraction process, which we call LIP process, and our backend process and knowhow enhances and unlocks lithium recovery. All of our processes are modular. They’re designed to be integrated into existing operations which makes things efficient for us and our potential clients. Our engineering expertise is focused on minimizing raw input materials in waste, meaning we try to obtain as much high recovery rates as possible with of course the lowest carbon intensity level possible. All of our processes have been demonstrated at lab and pilot scale on numerous industrial by-product streams and it’s highly efficient, continuous and cost competitive. One of the things that I want to mention as well is that one of our main mottos of our company is the home of lithium science. We live and breathe lithium and that’s what we expect to do moving forward.
TMH: What is the company’s current financial position and to that point, what can investors expect in terms of a return on investments?
CV: As mentioned before, we just closed our concurrent financing with our goal public process, and we raised close to $10 million Canadian gross without expenses. So up to today we have raised over $15 million Canadian since we started Full Circle. We believe we are well positioned and financed for the next 12-18 months and through, which is very important through revenue and potential cash flow generation later this year and over the next 12 months, that will have great shareholder support we believe. Having said that, we’re looking to grow fast in this market and take advantage of where we see it and we’ll be looking at being aggressive and acquiring feed to generate cash flow and even more returns. When you’re a public company, it’s hard to predict returns to shareholders because there are so many macro and micro market related issues that we don’t really control.
What I can say today is that and, on the day, we go public over the next few days is that we will only have about a 50 million market cap approximately in our competition that only focuses on batteries, not on three types of feed, are years away from revenue and have two to three times our market cap. If you add this to the fact that we expect to generate revenue and significant EBITDA over the next 12 months, then we have a significant potential to generate returns for shareholder. That’s the way I see it. Plain and simple.
TMH: Anything else you would like to add?
CV: I do. If you think of our business as a three-legged stool, at the top part is our fully operational lithium carbonate plant of 2000 tons. That by the way can be easily expanded up to 10,000 tons with minor capital investments. One leg of the stool is our three-prong approach for feed sourcing. Another leg would be our proven processing techniques and lastly but very important is our people, our technical team with over 70 years who combined lithium processing and operating experience. That just really kind of compliments all of our strategy and brings it to reality. Obviously, we have a number of other supporting cast members and qualities, but we have a very exciting core and we expect to succeed.
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