{"id":30582,"date":"2023-03-01T11:29:01","date_gmt":"2023-03-01T11:29:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.innovationnewsnetwork.com\/?p=30582"},"modified":"2023-05-12T13:28:18","modified_gmt":"2023-05-12T12:28:18","slug":"lithiumbank-securing-albertas-place-on-the-lithium-map","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.innovationnewsnetwork.com\/lithiumbank-securing-albertas-place-on-the-lithium-map\/30582\/","title":{"rendered":"LithiumBank: Securing Alberta\u2019s place on the lithium map"},"content":{"rendered":"
Based in Western Canada, LithiumBank Resources Corp. is a lithium development company dedicated to advancing direct brine lithium projects to production. LithiumBank has acquired and explored over four million acres of potential Direct Lithium Extraction (DLE) amenable assets within its portfolio and is making major progress at its key district-scale projects, including the Boardwalk Lithium Brine Project, Park Place exploration project in Alberta and its Saskatchewan portfolio of claims.<\/p>\n
With ambitious plans for further development and exploration, 2023 is set to be a year of great significance for the company. To learn more about the company\u2019s key aims and objectives for the year ahead, The Innovation Platform<\/em> spoke to CEO Rob Shewchuk.<\/p>\n What is different about us is that we started the business in a perfect storm. At the time of launch in 2019, the price of the commodity lithium was suffering significantly, and as a result, capital markets were closed. Companies that had good properties, especially in Western Canada, were unable to provide sufficient funds and meet certain work commitments required by the government. For example, every two years, it was a requirement to spend C$5 per hectare of land acquired. This was both a technical and financial challenge, as the costs associated with building a resource in the industry were much lower than this. An asset of one million hectares, for instance, would require a spend of C$5m, which is difficult to achieve when building a resource in this industry is as simple as taking water samples from an already-producing well. A sampling programme can cost as little as C$10,000.<\/p>\n Before we launched the company, I had been working with E3 Lithium. They took a different path by progressing technology, as they could get a grant for that, which allowed them to keep their assets in good standing. I knew that the rest of the market would not be as sophisticated in managing these challenges. Many junior companies moved their focus from lithium to gold as the lithium prices were too low to finance.<\/p>\n I determined that several years of deflated pricing would mean that people would have to return their claims if they were unable to complete the work required. Thus, presenting an opportunity for our company to pull in all of those claims as they came back into the Alberta regulator and became stake-able. We raised our capital with the intention to acquire these claims, strategically selecting them based on seismic data. Alongside raising this capital and purchasing seismic data, we also determined the location of the Leduc formation brine, as this was important for the grade of lithium, and identified the location of the confined aquifers that were large enough to create district-scale assets.<\/p>\n What sets us apart is that we are the only company developing multiple district-scale projects born out of an over four-million-acre exploration portfolio.<\/p>\n We have recently announced that Paul Matysek has joined us<\/a> as the Executive Chairman. Paul is very important to our game plan, which is to de-risk district-scale assets and attract partners to develop them. He is a solutions mining expert who has sold six projects. He has resourced PEA-level projects, all of which have moved forward into production, including both a uranium and potash mine in Saskatchewan, as well as two lithium projects in South America.<\/p>\n Paul sold those junior projects for a total of over $2.5bn in shareholder value. We are very proud to have Paul join us; he has been immensely helpful, providing great mentorship, and it is a delight to work with him daily.<\/p>\nWith a number of high-quality development projects within your portfolio, how has LithiumBank positioned itself to be the next battery-grade lithium producer?<\/h3>\n
Have there been any recent updates in the company itself?<\/h3>\n
When can we expect to see some economics\/ a preliminary economic assessment at your Boardwalk Project?<\/h3>\n