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| And I'm really proud of what we've accomplished, plant scale, no less |
| And as I mentioned, we're continuing to work on both, and we've been successful in even advancing both, so it's well within the specification required |
| But I mean, the gains that we've made, I think, they've surpassed or they certainly surpassed my expectations as -- in terms of the quality of the product and the recovery rates that we're seeing |
| And we're feeling -- I'm feeling -- honestly, I'm feeling better about that than I have in about a year |
| And if they are taking responsibility for sourcing the capital and we're doing the technical, it's a great value add for our shareholder base |
| So with this pause on the construction, we were able to move Phases 1 and 2 together simultaneously, and that's going to yield some benefits as the market starts to recover |
| And also really benefiting from the feedback of global battery makers that have had a number of years of black mass shredding experience with third parties and understanding what they like, what works, what doesn't work, how we can do things better and then a lot of discussions with stakeholders |
| So it's not quite a total type structure, but the idea of the arrangement that we entered into there and others that we're looking at is to have steady earnings that provide us with a good rate of return and a floor without the -- again, without the downside pressure, certainly, of the commodities market |
| And the reason we're still doing this 11 months later is because we keep learning and benefiting from the growing experience of the team there, so hats off |
| And they've been really, really good partner |
| And we've been able to do that by running the batches in the plant and tweaking reagent addition, tweaking retention times, temperature, a few tools at our disposal that we've managed to work with to get these improvements |
| In addition to that, over the quarter, we -- I think we received some real encouragement from sources for nondilutive financing that could get us to USD 60 million amount that we're going to need to complete our refinery, so some great progress there |
| They've got their hands in a lot of businesses, and they work with some pretty impressive partners, and we're delighted to be a part of them |
| And that's been -- I think it's been very positive |
| Recovery rates for some individual processing steps are at or superior to the results that we've achieved in the lab setting |
| And as I mentioned, we've made significant improvements on manganese recoveries with chloride reductions |
| We're making a quality MHP, and it keeps getting better |
| The other -- I guess the other piece I should mention on the refining side is when it does come in to our refinery, to be able to integrate a black mass plant with our cobalt plant has other advantages |
| And then this partnership, commercial relationship with LG, cornerstone partner, that now is a really, really great partner for us as well |
| With hindsight, I'm pleased that we moved, I guess, relatively early compared to maybe other players in the commodity space to kind of pull in our horns and try to mitigate the pressures that we saw, and I think that's paying a price |
| We're looking at trading houses, and it's not something we'll see by the end of this year, but I'm quite optimistic that things will get more interesting for us as we move towards the summer |
| For us, we get the benefit not just of exposure on the shredding but of a steady supply of material up to our refinery |
| So that's been fairly positive |
| We've made some great gains there and determine the throughput rate that we need for economic viability |
| So over the past quarter, since completing the re-baseline engineering report on our cobalt refinery, we've been particularly focused on our capital, our balance sheet, strengthening the balance sheet in 2 ways: one, despite some pretty tough markets and uncertainty, that hopefully -- that peaked, at least in regards to inflation, we did get pretty strong support, raising CAD 21.5 million in the month of August to support our efforts and energy proceeds |
| We finally got the final shipment back in September, so we're happy that all of that equipment is here |
| Critical success factors for the trial, number one, it's got to be safe; and it's got to be environmentally compliant with all the rules that we operate under within Ontario |
| Once fully commissioned, this building will be where we will be separating the majority of the impurities of our feed and making better than 99.99% pure battery-grade cobalt sulfate solution |
| So that's going to be up to 80% of our production and more than a 2.5x increase in the total volume under contract from our initial announcement the year prior |
| And I think we're looking pretty good with most of the long lead equipment now at site |
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| We have said on a previous call or maybe 2 that we anticipated 2023 was going to be challenging |
| I should point out that the crystallizer circuit contains the falling film evaporator, and that was the vessel that we put out an announcement on a number of months back that was damaged during shipping |
| The delay in the receipt of the waiver, unfortunately, had a bearing on our reporting time line |
| There was a number of delays in getting them here, not only getting them here, but getting them fabricated |
| We think it's a cautious one and a logical one by way of de-risking the process and gradually moving towards battery-grade product production through recycling as opposed to just commercial products, which is fine and generates money |
| For reasons -- various reasons, we paused that |
| We've seen significant orders of magnitude drops in that |
| But I guess, more importantly, we took some early steps to insulate ourselves from a lot of that |
| Our net loss for the period was $9.2 million, of which $4.4 million was due to fair value adjustments relating to our convertible notes |
| And so it's like slowing down the Titanic |
| So that review process, the ongoing process that we've been making are factors that have caused some of the timing issues that we've experienced on the funding |
| It's just the market is not ready for it yet given the infrastructure in North America |
| I mean, yes, you did add that financing which has certainly helped, but your working capital position is still kind of low given your burn |
| And I think factoring that development is -- also impacted some of the timing of the release of the funding that's been committed to us |
| But when we decided to pause construction in March, I mean it's tough to solve a procurement machine when you've got stuff being ordered and fabricated from around the world |
| And that was something that was just not projected |
| And a number of the impurities have significantly dropped, impurities that would maybe not be an issue to us, but more for a downstream refiner, such as fluoride, manganese, copper |
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