Transcription of The Stock Network Interview with European Lithium (ASX:EUR), Executive Chairman, Tony Sage
Lel Smits: Shares in European lithium are up more than 300% this year on the back of significant resource development activity, major funding inflows and continued advancement of high value critical minerals assets, including rare earths in Greenland and the largest lithium mined in Europe based in Ukraine. Joining me today is Executive Chairman Tony Sage to explain how European lithium is building a globally diversified critical minerals portfolio supported by a strengthening balance sheet and expanded drilling programs. Tony, welcome to the Stock Network.
Tony Sage: Thanks very much for having me on.
Lel Smits: Now, European lithium reported proceeds from the sale of Critical Metals Corp shares followed by a major post-quarter transaction increasing combined European lithium and Critical Metals Corp cash to around $325 million Australian dollars. How do these funding outcomes support European lithium strategy? Also, can you outline what does this really mean for the development of your core assets?
Tony Sage: Oh, look, it’s huge. I mean, most junior companies struggle to raise capital. Now we’ve got so much capital in the bank, we can actually invest in other projects other than our own. So it’s been a huge bonus for us.
And we’ve still got 55 million Critical Metals shares left. And at today, at yesterday’s closing price, that’s about 800 million Australian dollars. So that’s just sitting on our balance sheet.
We can sell those at any time. So European lithium is in a great position, not only to invest in other projects, but invest in our existing projects that we own.
Lel Smits: Excellent and taking a look at those existing projects, Tamburis is your biggest asset that’s located in Greenland, and it continues to produce high grade drilling results. What do you believe makes this such a unique Rare Earths project globally? And also, what are the next milestones that you think investors should be keeping an eye out for?
Tony Sage: Yeah, just on milestones, I think the milestone, the biggest milestone is obviously selling the offtake. We’ve already sold 25% of the offtake of the project.
So we’ve got 75% to go. And my priority is to get that done. Once we’ve sold 100%, the next priorities will come, which is drawing down on the Ex-Im loan.
We’re the first foreign company with a foreign asset to get access to US$120 million out of Ex-Im Bank, the US export bank. So that’s fantastic for us. So first of all, get the offtakes done and then start the drawdown on that.
We don’t expect to start the mining until late next year or early the year after. There’s a lot of work to be done still on that front. But once we’ve secured financing, we should be, as you know, probably 90% there.
Lel Smits: Excellent & Tony, finally, European Lithium is building scale across a number of key jurisdictions, drilling and geological mapping underway in Austria, field crews and sampling programs active in Ireland and ongoing permitting in Ukraine and also strategic value growth through that shareholding that you’ve got in Critical Metals Corp. What are your immediate priorities though? And also what role does Critical Metals Corp play in creating value for shareholders?
Tony Sage: Very important. So Critical Metals is our biggest asset. As I mentioned, $800 million worth of shares that we still own. We’ve already sold shares, which has given us our big cash balance.
So it’s very, very critical for us. However, the future of the company is going to be in our other assets. The Irish assets are very, very good.
Before the Lithium price started to fall, we had drill results that were excellent. They’ve been announced. It was close to 4% Lithium at surface, which is brilliant.
But our big, big asset is obviously the Dobra asset in Ukraine. The war looks like be coming to an end. Once that comes to an end, under the Russian drilling, it was 90 million tons at 1.36%. So that’s a huge, huge asset for us.
And that will need hundreds of millions of dollars to develop. And we’ve got that in the bank. So we don’t have to worry about anyone else funding that.
Lel Smits: Well, it’s great to have the intro from European Lithium and look forward to seeing what happens next for the company.
Tony Sage: Right. Thank you very much.
Ends