PUR’s lithium pilot plan now up and running

Our Argentinian lithium brine Investment Pursuit Minerals (ASX: PUR) just started producing “technical grade lithium carbonate”.

PUR announced today that its 250tpa pilot plant was now up and running, processing synthetic brines (identical to the type of brines that it expects to come from it’s project).

PUR’s plant will initially be producing “technical-grade lithium carbonate”, with plans to slowly transition the plant into producing “battery grade” product.

The key unlock here for PUR is that they are able to produce and send off product samples to potential offtake partners…

PUR mentioned in today’s announcement that they had already started engaging with potential offtake partners who had requested samples:

For the next few months, PUR’s focus at the pilot plant is to refine the plant so that processing is as efficient as possible and lithium recoveries are maximised.

Then it will be about moving the plant on site to pair it up with its project.

The latest from PUR’s project:

A few weeks back PUR put out the following announcement:

In it we got a better understanding of how PUR plans to scale up and develop its existing

1.1Mt LCE JORC resource (with average grades of 505.8mg/li).

The plan at a very high level is to start small with what PUR already has - a 250tpa operation using PUR’s pilot plant on site, and then scale up in two stages, first to 5,000tpa then 10,000tpa.

We also got a better understanding of how much it would cost PUR to get to those stages.

The CAPEX estimate to get to stage 1 was estimated at US$9.751M, that would include:

• The costs to relocate the pilot plant
• Building out the evaporation ponds
• Building out all other associated project infrastructure.

So for ~US$10M, PUR would be able to produce ~250 tonnes per annum of lithium carbonate.

At today’s (depressed) prices, that would be ~A$4M in lithium carbonate production per annum.

To get an idea of what that would have been worth at the height of lithium prices - lithium carbonate prices were almost 10x higher in 2021-22.

The same production from PUR’s planned stage 1 development would have been worth ~A$30M per annum in revenues.

Beyond stage 1 - PUR’s plan is to first build a 5,000tpa lithium carbonate plant, and then expand the project even further by building a second 10,000tpa facility.

At the end of stage 3 PUR would have ~15,250tpa of processing capacity and all of the evaporation ponds necessary to feed the plants.

There was no CAPEX estimate for Stage 2 & 3 but PUR did briefly note that it would exceed the US$200M threshold that would make its project qualify for the Argentinian Governments “Incentive Regime for Large Investments (RIGI)” initiative.

RIGI was introduced by the Argentine government in July 2024 offering big mining projects:

• A reduced federal corporate income tax rate from 35% to 25%; •
• Elimination of export duties on lithium carbonate sales; AND
• Accelerated tax depreciation for plant and equipment

(Source)

What’s next for PUR?

The following slide from PUR’s presentation at the Resources Rising Stars conference in Brisbane gave us a pretty good idea of what to expect next from PUR.

The video version of the presentation is a pretty good watch - Managing Director Aaron tells the story really well: Pursuit Minerals (ASX:PUR) at RRS Summer Series Brisbane