Business View Magazine | June 2020

80 BUSINESS VIEW MAGAZINE JUNE 2020 good return. “The PFS document gives a big tick to the technical, to the commercials, and that’s the basis for the detailed engineering design that goes out to make the case to the banks and other financial institutions that this is a project worthy of investment. Our waste materials are all benign, and we look to integrate at least 50 percent renewable energy into the project over the long term, so we’re making it a really clean, low-cost producing hub, as well. That’s another critical component.” BVO: What are the most important points about the Butcherbird Project you’d like people to know? Brown: “Low capital cost and early cashflow for the Stage 1 operation, really robust optionality for expansion, and ultimately, high penetration renewable energy and a cleaner flowsheet design for high purity manganese means we’ll have a very low carbon, highly environmentally friendly product suite. It’s a set of products that feeds perfectly into current market demand, as well as the global transition from internal combustion to EVs. It’s in a very well regulated and stable jurisdiction in Western Australia and the long mine life is key in terms of providing sustainable investor returns. It’s not a typical mine that only has seven to ten years of reserves; we have reserves that will go out 40 years and beyond. And over time, our aim is to be the lowest cost producer globally. So once we are established, we have a really strong opportunity to expand and grow the business aggressively with the huge resource we have. There is an exciting future ahead for Element 25.” project. The downstream processing element is something Australia hasn’t done a lot of in recent times, and this project aims to ultimately taking the ore right through to end products in terms of manganese metal and manganese sulphate for batteries. We believe it will be the lowest cost producer globally, so once we establish the project it will be incredibly competitive. “It’s obviously in a stable jurisdiction in Western Australia, which is something that the end users of these products are telling us is a really big tick. Because investment capital these days is much more willing to flow into well-regulated, stable, ethical jurisdictions and that bodes well for the financing of the project. From an investor’s point of view, we have a very low valuation at the moment, we’re well funded so our dilution risk is low, and you’re getting in at a compelling valuation, so you’ve got a lot of opportunities for capital appreciation on the development path we’re on and it should give a