After Standard Lithium (TSXV: SLL) (OTCQX: STLHF) (FRA: S5L) managed to close an almost two times oversubscribed C$12.1M capital raise on February 21, 2020, the company is financed at least into the “Proof of Concept” completion of the demonstration plant, and the subsequent consummation of the formal Joint Venture with LANXESS.

It seems more and more likely that Standard Lithium (TSXV: SLL) (OTCQX: STLHF) (FRA: S5L) is displaying a serious commitment of giant JV partner Lanxess these days, with construction of the demonstration plant advancing rapidly along the way. Standard managed to arrange a C$5M (US$3.75M) convertible loan and guarantee agreement with Lanxess on October 30, 2019, and has already been paid out to Standard.

1. Introduction

Usually, when I hear about companies pursuing new recovery methods necessary to make uneconomic specialty metals projects economic, I’m very sceptic about their chances of success. The simple reason for this is that developing such methods are very capital intensive, and very difficult to scale up from bench scale (laboratorium scale) to commercial scale pilot plants.