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noRtH AMeRIcA

Piedmont on the prowl

espite the malaise in the lithium sector battery materials. It won’t be very hard to US now and the reality is that 90% of our
Dthrough the back half of 2020, the soon fund windshields and tyres and steering trading volume is on the NASDAQ,” Phillips
to be redomiciled Piedmont Lithium Ltd is wheels, but it’s going to be hard to fund the said.
charging towards construction. batteries which ultimately drive the cars “American investors are more provincial,
Piedmont is on track to start building its they’re making. I would say, than Australian investors. An
namesake lithium project in North Carolina, “Clearly they’re going to need more and American investor wouldn’t want to own
US, during the second half of this year, hav- more lithium and they want to get as much an Australian or Canadian company be-
ing already secured a lucrative sales agree- of it as they can from the US, and obviously cause they just don’t have that background.
ment with Tesla Inc to supply spodumene that’s good for us because that’s where we They’re far more comfortable with an Amer-
concentrate to the leading EV maker for are.” ican company.”
potentially as long as a decade. As 2020 drew to a close and with the Piedmont has also joined forces with
The company is also expected to final- market spotlight firmly on the company another ASX-listed North American lithium
ise the redomiciling of its primary listing to following the Tesla agreement, Piedmont hopeful in Sayona Mining Ltd via a $US12
the US next month as the various pieces quickly decided to rattle the tin for $81.2 mil- million investment and binding supply
of its plan to become the leading domes- lion via an underwritten US public offering. agreement for 50% of that company’s spo-
tic producer of lithium hydroxide for the re- Funds from the raising are being directed dumene production from its proposed op-
emerging North American battery materials towards separate feasibility studies on the erations in Quebec, Canada.
market gathers serious momentum. concentrate operations and the lithium Under the agreement announced last
Piedmont’s stock on the ASX has surged chemical plant. month, Piedmont now owns 19.9% of
700% since September when the company The 160,000 tpa quarry and spodumene Sayona and 25% of that company’s Que-
announced it was set to supply spodumene concentrator study is expected to be com- bec-based subsidiary.
concentrate to Tesla for five years from as pleted midway through the year and is be- Sayona has completed a DFS on its
early as mid-2022, plus an option over a ing led by a combined group which includes Authier lithium project near the longstand-
further five years. long-time company partners Primero Group ing mining town of Val d’Or and is currently
The binding agreement with Tesla is for Ltd and Marshall Miller & Associates. The bidding for the mothballed North American
roughly one-third of the proposed 160,000 DFS on the integrated chemical operations Lithium (NAL) operations.
tpa production output and is expected to is also due to kick off this quarter. “We saw Sayona as kind of an orphan
generate 10-20% of the total sales rev- Piedmont recently made a number of key in the capital markets, not well understood
enue from Piedmont’s integrated mine-to- appointments to its management team, in- and not really followed by investors,” Phil-
hydroxide project. cluding Malissa Gordon (manager, commu- lips said.
Speaking to Paydirt from his US base, nity and government relations), Jim Notting- “Given our plans to build our hydroxide
Piedmont president and chief execu- ham (senior project manager, concentrate capacity, we want to convert not only our
tive Keith Phillips revealed that Tesla had operations), John “Pratt” Ray (production own spodumene but potentially others
reached out to the company because it was manager, chemical operations) and Brian around the world. We looked at the map, we
chasing more local supply. Risinger (vice-president, corporate com- talked to a lot of people around the world
“Given we’re in the US and they’re in the munications and investor relations) as the and Sayona kept coming up in these dis-
US, we thought that was a good idea to be company works diligently towards its goal of cussions we were having.
part of their supply chain,” Phillips said. being “shovel-ready” by year’s end. “Their development timeline is very simi-
“People will say a lot of things about Te- While the company plans to retain the lar to ours and so we took the opportunity
sla, in my experience they’re all good. We ASX listing it has had for the past four years, to sign an offtake agreement and invest on
have a great relationship and they’re en- Piedmont will soon call the NASDAQ its pri- what we think are very attractive terms. It’s
couraging us to not only supply them with mary bourse. an exciting situation and we’re very happy
spodumene concentrate, but they’re hope- “We have a strong group of institutional to be helping each other to build a bigger
ful we will become a strong independent shareholders in Australia and some great business.”
producer of lithium hydroxide. individual and retail shareholders as well,
“The biggest constraint to their ability to they’ve really been our lifeblood, but we’ve – Michael Washbourne
grow EV sales will be their ability to source established a strong position here in the

Piedmont has made a $US12 million investment in ASX-listed,
Quebec-focused lithium hopeful Sayona Mining

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