MOSCOW (MRC) -- Piedmont Lithium says it has agreed to invest USD12 million acquiring an ownership stake in lithium and spodumene developer Sayona Mining (Paddington, Queensland, Australia) and its wholly owned Canadian subsidiary Sayona Quebec, as well as entering into a supply agreement for at least half of Sayona Quebec's planned spodumene concentrate production, said Chemweek.
Piedmont will buy an initial 9.9% ownership stake in Sayona for approximately USD3.1 million and two unsecured convertible notes for USD3.9 million that on conversion would result in it buying an additional 10% interest. It will also buy a 25% stake in Sayona Quebec for approximately USD5 million in cash as a "project investment," and has entered into a binding agreement with Sayona for the Quebec company to supply Piedmont with the greater of either 60,000 metric tons/year or 50% of the spodumene concentrate it produces at market prices on a life-of-mine basis, it says.
The share placement and notes issue are expected to close this week, while the Sayona Quebec project investment is expected to close in February 2021, it adds.
Sayona has assets in a “favorable location” in the Val-d’Or region of central Quebec, Canada, with the investments being made at an attractive valuation, according to Piedmont’s CEO Keith Phillips. “The investments are additive to Piedmont from a resources and reserves perspective, and the spodumene supply agreement will offset our Tesla commitments in the near term and position us for longer term growth in lithium hydroxide production,” he says. Quebec is “poised to become an important lithium hydroxide production center,” he adds.
Piedmont is under way with initial development plans for a 160,000-metric tons/year spodumene mine and 22,700-metric tons/year lithium hydroxide project in North Carolina, with an integrated definitive feasibility study due to start in the first quarter of this year. In September it signed a five-year deal with Tesla to supply spodumene concentrate for high-nickel batteries.
As MRC informed earlier, Piedmont Plastics (Charlotte, North Carolina) say it has acquired rival plastics distributor Empire Plastics (Sioux Falls, South Dakota), marking the company’s expansion into the Upper Midwest region of the US. Terms of the transaction, including purchase price, were not disclosed. Empire also increases the number of Piedmont branch locations in North America to 50.
We remind that Russia's output of chemical products rose in October 2020 by 7.2% year on year. At the same time, production of basic chemicals grew in the first ten months of 2020 by 6.3% year on year, according to Rosstat's data. According to the Federal State Statistics Service of the Russian Federation, polymers in primary form accounted for the greatest increase in the January-October output. October production of polymers in primary form grew to 857,000 tonnes from 852,000 tonnes in September. Overall output of polymers in primary form totalled 8,340,000 tonnes over the stated period, up by 17% year on year.