Good morning everyone for those that are joining us in Australia. Good evening to Ken Brinsden and Olivier Caza-Lapointe from Patriot Battery Metals joining us evening their time over in Montreal in Canada. Thanks very much for joining us. My name is Nicholas Read from Read Corporate and it's a great pleasure to introduce this webinar for Patriot on what is clearly a very exciting time for the company. Yesterday Patriot announced a maiden resource estimate for the cesium discovery at the Shawinigan Project. Very exciting and well received announcement and refer everyone to that ASX release that went out yesterday and also to the PowerPoint presentation that was lodged this morning and which Ken is going to step us through shortly.
Just a reminder to everyone who's joined us, this is intended as an interactive session, so please make full use of the Q& A tab that's on the right hand side of your webinar browser to log your questions. We do have a couple that came in via email before we started, so we'll deal with those. We'll also definitely take your questions online and I'm sure Ken and Olivier will be happy to take those questions. Ken, welcome. Congratulations on the announcement and on the share price run yesterday. That was pretty exciting. Please tell us all the latest and I'm sure you're also going to give us an update on the lithium side of things as well, so please take it away.
Thank you very much for hosting, Nicholas. It's a pleasure to be with you, your audience, and a warm welcome to Patriot Battery Metals shareholders who might have joined us either this afternoon, this evening, or this morning if you're in Australia. It is a pleasure to be with you and I'm really pleased to be talking about some more progress inside the company, this time with the focus on a very new and important discovery at our Shawinigan Project. The cesium discovery is what we would describe as being really material to the potential and the future in cesium markets, primarily as a function of its scale and grade. A really remarkable discovery and full credit to our team for all the effort they've put in over what's about four years now in exploration at Shawinigan and proving that it really is North America's critical mineral powerhouse.
What are we going to cover this evening or this morning? I'm going to talk a bit about the geology and why it's turned out to be so good and so important to the future of critical mineral supply in North America and in Europe. I'll delve into a bit more detail about cesium itself, try and explain what its relevance is as a specialty metal. A little bit about the state of the market today, but perhaps more about the future of cesium markets and what's motivating the industry and what's going to be fundamentally changing the demand dynamic in the cesium world. I'm going to come back to lithium because, of course, lithium is still incredibly important to the future of Patriot and to our Shawinigan Project. We're making good progress there as well. Pleased to be with you and really looking forward to sharing more information.
For those of you that may not be completely familiar with our Shawinigan Project, it's hosted in central north Quebec. Quebec is a really important mining jurisdiction in Canada and one of the better mining jurisdictions for all of the discipline and the regulatory regiment and t he positive First Nations engagement, the infrastructure that's accessible to the mining industry, including really important renewable power resources, road networks, rail networks, and, of course, connections to ports, all of those things make Quebec a fantastic mining jurisdiction. We are incredibly well placed within the James Bay region of Quebec. As much as our project is relatively remote from communities, it's not remote from infrastructure. In fact, one of the largest hydro dams in Quebec, LG4, La Grande- 4, is only about 45 km away from Shawinigan Project.
Now it's wholly interconnected with roads, including a 20 kilometer access road that we've built to our site. There's the LG4 airport, there's the Trans-Taiga highway. There's accessible power and actually masses of it, albeit through application, which we'll go through over the course of the next couple of years. All of that is key infrastructure that's ultimately going to contribute to the future of Shawinigan Project. What is it and why is the geology so good? In the hard rock lithium world, you're looking primarily for LCT pegmatites. Lithium, cesium, tantalum pegmatites, LCT pegmatites. It's relatively rare that you find a bit of each, let alone a little bit in any one of those pegmatites. What we have now at Shawinigan is that it's got masses of each of lithium, cesium, and tantalum. It really is a phenomenal piece of geology.
Not only does it host lithium, cesium, and tantalum at scale, it hosts it with what are pretty reasonable average grades, I would say much better than average. Subsets of those grades are very high grade. We've proven that in lithium, we've proven it in tantalum, and now we've proven it in cesium. The cesium discovery is remarkable for its incredible scale and grade. In fact, it's almost unprecedented in the world of cesium, w hat we've discovered. A t CV13 so far, 2.4 million tons at 2.3% cesium, that is incredible in its scale. Again, a subset of it is very, very high grade. It's got a subset of it at the Rigel zone that is 160,000 tons at 10.5% cesium. In essence, that is the equivalent of direct shipping ore in the pollucite and cesium world. Let me explain what pollucite is.
Pollucite is to cesium, the concentrate pollucite is to cesium in the same way that spodumene is to lithium. In the case of tantalum, the contributing concentrate is tantalite. You have spodumene contributing to lithium, you have pollucite contributing to cesium, and you have tantalite contributing to tantalum. Each of which has got amazing scale and at Shawinigan. It really is an incredible piece of geology, something to behold. I'm going to explain why cesium is important. Cesium has actually important historical applications. It's in the optical industry or the optical electrical industry, things like medical imaging, also, you know, equipment in medicine, the atomic clock industry, GPS industries, they all use cesium in some derivative for the purpose of contributing to those legacy industries. Another big one is as a heavy media in the deep oil and gas drilling industry. That's where cesium has been.
Its future appears in the application for solar. To explain why this is so important, you need to understand a little bit about how the solar industry works. We've included a graph here on the right hand side of the slide that tracks the efficiency of the application of solar panel manufacturing techniques. Mostly to date that's been based on silica and silica wafer technology. Silica wafers have now started to hit their sort of maximum efficiency, all the energy that they're going to capture from the sun and ultimately convert into electricity. Let's say that nominally sits at about 25% efficiency. Within the last decade they've worked out that alternative structures, so these so-called perovskite structures, can vastly improve solar panel efficiency. It just so happens that the ideal element for inclusion in those perovskite structures is cesium. It's applied using different techniques.
There's the so-called raw perovskite cells, there's perovskite tandem cells where they're starting to layer and then they're layering with silicon as well. A combination of technologies is having the effect of vastly improving the efficiency of the panel. On the right hand side of the graph that's shown, you can see the effect of research and development as they continue to perfect these perovskite structures inclusive of cesium that are starting to vastly improve the solar panel efficiency. It's not a small step up, nominally 30%- 35% worth of improvement in the panel efficiency. This is a really big deal. What does that mean for the solar panel industry? Obviously they continue to keep pursuing this technology.
However, it hits a roadblock at the time when you think about what's required to access cesium, but also to obtain it from classic kind of western supply, and that's because a lot of, like a lot of other critical minerals industries, China has gone heavy into the investment and now would typically dominate those industries. Good on them for pursuing that line of manufacturing and the purification of these key critical minerals. It also means that it's a risk when you're going to sort of one or two sources of supply. That's why we ultimately think our discovery, and especially given its scale and grade, can in effect start to change the supply balance as demand continues to grow from this emerging perovskite technology and its application in the solar industry.
This is a really important development in respect of cesium demand and something that we ultimately think a big project like ours could play into. What do we do about that? Obviously, we continue to keep pursuing the project. That's our objective and we'll be doing everything we can to continue to progress the project as reasonably and as quickly as we possibly can. That will also include engagement with the industry downstream. The good news, we're already receiving inquiry from the industry players downstream. We're happy to engage and work out the best way to ensure that such a large project, and we'd hope that a project that's really material to the future of cesium supply, can be as deeply engaged commercially in the supply chain downstream as is possible .
Inevitably, I'm sure there'll be some questions in this regard, so I'll look forward to what you come up with. In the lithium world, we're already a big player. Shawinigan is the largest hard rock lithium resource in the Americas, and its subsets of it are incredibly high grade. The lithium in CV5 is the subject of our feasibility study that is due for completion during the current quarter. It's not too far away and we're looking forward to demonstrating the potential in the project and getting through the final mine authorization processes. When I think about how confusing the time has been in lithium markets and the lithium world, I completely understand the confusion it's caused. Particularly for the last two to three years it's all been about supply. I think the market's now got to the point where we should be intensely focused on what's happening with demand.
Our view today would be that demand is likely being underestimated. To try and paint this picture, I'll use a couple of analogies, the first of which is actually the solar industry itself, because the path there has already been well established a s to the broad analyst community under calling demand, the reality is solar panels have gotten much cheaper, faster than anyone would have assumed, and therefore the addressable market has grown to the point where year- on- year, basically every year, demand outstripped anyone's reasonable forecast. I would suggest that lithium and the effect of what's happening with lower cost cells, and especially coming out of China, means that people are underestimating the addressable market with those lower cost cells. It plays out in a couple of key ways.
The first is lower cost EVs and therefore faster adoption of EVs, because it'll become such a no brainer to be buying from a capital cost point of view and an operating cost point of view, the EV in preference to the ICE. I think you're already starting to see that manifest itself in most markets, maybe not so much in North America, but in the rest of the world. You're starting to see EV adoption accelerate because of the multitude of product that's available and the relative cost of that product, but also in stationary and energy storage. Battery energy storage systems at every sort of point in the network, at people's houses, at a unit scale, at a suburb scale, at a grid scale. The effect of lower cost cells means that it's ultra competitive to install those cells in the network. What does that lead to?
It leads to faster adoption as compared to what people are estimating today. I think this year is a classic example to point it out. Mostly expected growth in battery and energy storage systems, even with the benefit of last year's big growth. People forecasting 40%. It's already, we're halfway through the year and it's already up 51%. That's really only the tip of the iceberg because the pipeline in June, just one month, was 59 GW hours. That's in effect 220% higher year-on-year than the same time last year. Really what I'm suggesting is that the speed with which the cells have got cheaper in China means that the markets they penetrate is faster than analysts are currently assuming. The implication is people are under calling, under calling the demand. What does that mean?
Ultimately it means that demand catches up with what most people would say has been excess supply in the last couple of years, but it happens faster than people currently assume. This is a big lever in lithium markets and we might very well already be on the cusp of a pretty material change in the market. What else can you say about stationary energy storage? It's a phenomenon and this is one that I think we all need to watch much closer. It turns out that this year's application, even just based on forecast as compared to where we might actually land at the end of the year, is pretty much the same as EV adoption only four years ago.
The key here is that this subset of the battery demand is growing at + 50% per annum, maybe even higher as compared to pretty deep sort of consistent demand of 25%- 30% demand growth in the EV sector. It's not unreasonable to expect actually then stationary energy storage, it becomes a much, much bigger market than EVs over time. My personal view, this is exactly what China is setting up for with these very low cost cells, especially in the LFP category, lithium iron phosphate batteries. In the end you'll see them form a huge part of that market pretty much all the way around the world, where they're set, where their cells can be sold. That's stationary energy storage. I want to talk just briefly about the team.
I'm really proud and pleased to be working with a fantastic team, each of whom have amazing skills actually in their own areas of expertise, including being involved in very successful companies and very successful development opportunities. A fantastic team to be working with and people that you can ultimately trust to be good stewards of what we believe is an amazing project for Quebec, Canada and the future of lithium, cesium and tantalite supply. What do you get in PMET? You get an incredible piece of geology. It's now proven in lithium, cesium and tantalum and in no way, shape or form is it an average resource in any of those categories. It's typically category leading in each lithium, cesium and tantalum.
That's what ultimately attracts big ticket players like VW, like PowerCo , that we've already done deals with for participation in and around our company and the future of the development project. It's such a good project that you're going to attract key partners to become part of its future. We're going to continue to keep working on the delivery of the project with all the discipline we can muster in terms of keeping the project on time and on track for delivery, u ltimately, in the first part of 2029. T he PEA already demonstrated it was an amazing project with very, very solid operating costs, and ultimately we'd expect our feasibility study to fulfill a similar aim. As I mentioned earlier, the feasibility study is still on track for presentation in the September quarter. We're looking forward to demonstrating what the project can do in the intervening period.
As we get set for the last part of the mine authorization process. Nicholas, I've probably said enough and I'm sure there'll be some fantastic questions. I look forward to what else we can entertain as we deal with the questions. Thank you.
Thanks very much, Ken. Great presentation and fantastic to see such great news from Patriot. We do have tons of questions here, so we'll get straight into it. I'll just deal with a couple that came in via email first. Ken, as you can imagine, people are trying to get a handle on what the value of the cesium means for the company. The first question here from an analyst is can you please clarify for us what the cesium metal price means for your deposit? A quick back of the math envelope. The analyst says he gets a pretty big number at $81 a gram, but that is multiples the size of the market. Is there a better way to quantify the value that you have here?
Yes, I understand the question, Nicholas. The cesium metal price is quoted. You would think of it as something equivalent to gold, sort of two and a nominally $2,500 an ounce, but that's actually not the way most cesium is traded globally. A subset of the element is sold as metal, but the majority of it makes its way downstream in very high value, equally probably high value, but high value chemicals. The first of those for broad distribution in cesium markets is cesium carbonate or sometimes cesium hydroxide. Even cesium carbonate is in itself a high value product. Today, cesium carbonate of relatively fine purity sells for about $120,000 a ton. To give you some idea for comparison purposes, lithium carbonate today, let's say it sells for $8,000 or $10,000 a ton.
By any measure it's also a high value product, but that's where the majority of the product is traded annually in cesium markets. Now, what do we do? This is an interesting question, Nicholas, so I'm just going to take this question perhaps one step further and say, when you have such a large resource, you might think about your participation in cesium markets in a different way, including the potential for more downstream involvement. That is something that we will actively explore and as I said, we've already received inbound engagement from industry players downstream about what could be done with a discovery like this. We'll happily entertain those conversations and work out the best way to ensure we ultimately maximize the value in what we think is a really important resource globally for the cesium world.
Thanks very much, Ken. Let's go to an online question. An analyst asks here, how difficult will it be to incorporate cesium extraction into the flow sheet? The second part of his question is what percentage of revenue over the life of mine could cesium be responsible for?
Yeah. Look, just being honest about it, it's too early in the development phases to be thinking about the outright economics. We've clearly got more work to do in that area before we can be more fulsome in our disclosure, but obviously our objective will be to get to those economic solutions as quickly as we reasonably can. It's good news in respect of the recovery of pollucite. In reality, it's actually not that hard and arguably easier than spodumene, depending on how far you take the product. For the purpose of extracting pollucite at a mine level, it's a relatively simple targeted mining execise, so t argeting the higher grade pollucite zone and then running that ore through ore sorting technology. O re sorting technology can readily differentiate between pollucite and spodumene concentrates.
You end up with basically a split in your feed based on the ore sorting technology differentiating those two minerals, and that should have the effect of creating a first run of mine concentrate in pollucite and a first run of mine concentrate in spodumene. In reality, actually at a mine level, dealing with pollucite for the purpose of subsequent cesium extraction is relatively easy.
Excellent. Thanks, Ken. There's another question here about what CapEx and timeline would be needed to fast track cesium production. I appreciate that this is early stages, so we may not be able to sort of deal with detailed numbers, but the other part of the question is an interesting one. Could PMT generate early cash flow from cesium before lithium production in 2029?
Yeah, again, completely understand the line of inquiry, and of course we'll continue to assess what can be achieved based on the first resource and the engineering work and metallurgical test work, that sort of stuff that's going to happen from here. Unfortunately, it is just a bit too early to be definitive about what we think we can do other than to say we will progress it as reasonably quickly and practically as quickly as we can. I think a logical thing to explain is that in the definition of the maiden resource, it doesn't change our strategy in respect of CV5 and the lithium only feasibility study. I really want to make that distinction because it's important that people understand that our feasibility study was set up to deal with lithium only and our logic in doing so.
Firstly, from definition of the resources point of view, that's what's known for the purpose of the progress of the feasibility study. Also, we want to ensure that we've simplified the approvals process to the extent that we can for the first round of mining at Shawinigan. Hence, it's a staged project development, lithium only at CV5. Therefore, any of these additional byproduct and co-product opportunities like pollucite containing cesium or tantalite containing tantalum, they are in effect bolt-on opportunities in respect of the broader economics around the project. Our first objective is to ensure that we continue with the lithium project. It's a really important lithium project. We'd be confident that ultimately it's going to attract the capital to ensure its development, l arge, multi-decade, long life sort of asset in high quality.
It'll be an important one for the future of lithium raw material supply globally, and then these additional economic opportunities which we'd like to think are likely or potentially immaterial are fantastic bolt-on to the economics of the project. We've definitely got more work to do before we can make definitive statements about that.
Okay, thanks Ken. The next question here is can you please shed some light on how you think about the development of CV13? Could we see CV13 fast tracked on the back of this update, or is it still a project that comes on once CV5 is in production and fully ramped up?
Your CV13 has the benefit of being dry, basically away from waterways and actually, relatively speaking, smaller scale than CV5 even though it contains the higher value cesium product, for example. It's also about 18- 24 months behind the development of CV5. It's got some catch up to do from the point of view of all our environmental studies and the works that are ultimately required for a project approval. All we will do is we will continue with all that work and to the extent that we can accelerate it such that CV13 becomes an important bolt-on opportunity at the same time that we're ultimately constructing CV5. Therefore, the net effect of all that is that CV13 is not far behind in the development cycle as to what other opportunities might be available in the intervening period.
If, for example, we were only thinking about cesium or pellucid, there is definitely more work to be done to see whether smaller scale operations and, or the effect of a lesser mining enterprise in a dry location can translate to another form of approval. That's all to be determined but we would definitely be exploring that area.
Excellent. Thanks Ken. Quick change of pace from cesium. Just an email question from an analyst here. Can you give any color on how your Indigenous relationships are going too insofar as it relates to permitting?
Yeah, yeah, no, I'm really pleased and really proud of the relationship with the crew and with the community in Chisasibi. We've had a very, very deep level of engagement going on with Chisasibi pretty much from the beginning. The first rounds of drilling back in, you know, late 2021 even, our engagement with Chisasibi was strong. Especially in the last two years as we've been continuing to progress the project development, we've been up there every six weeks, consistently deep levels of engagement with the community, community workshops, education workshops, and high levels of employment at site. Year to date we're hovering around 20% employment of the Cree, of which by far the majority come from just outside Chisasibi, and I guess, yeah, I'm both proud and really pleased with that relationship. It's like everything in community engagement, you just cannot take it for granted.
We've got to keep working really hard on continuing to grow that relationship. It's just such an important relationship for the future of the project. So far, so good.
Thanks, Ken. Let's keep powering through these questions. They keep coming in here. The next one is Canadian Prime Minister Carney has said that he will streamline the environmental approval process in Canada. Is there any lobbying being done in that sense? What are the chances that PMET 's environmental studies could be streamlined or expedited in a similar way to what we've seen in the U.S. where we're seeing mining projects being fast tracked by the Trump administration?
Yes. Per our announcements over the last 12- 15 months, you can see that we've been involved in both levels of process now for quite some time. The provincial and Cree process in Quebec and the James Bay region. In the last four months or so, four or five months, we've been in the federal process. I'm very pleased to say that at a federal level, yeah, we are seeing a very, very engaged and positive, you know, relationship in respect of the progress of project approvals. We've submitted our project description and in short order we've received our advice with respect to the ESIA contents. The federal government has sought to initiate community consultation in rapid order. All of that looks to have progressed actually much faster than I believe would typically be the case through their applicable timelines.
Yes, there is evidence to indicate that the federal arena is moving at a pace that I think probably matches the rhetoric, if you like, in respect of the public domain. At the provincial level, we're getting a healthy level of service from the COMEX process, and we're getting a huge level of interest out of the Cree in respect of the continued progress of the project. I think in the end, there's really no better place to be progressing mine approval than in the James Bay region of Quebec, probably within Canada. It feels like we've got a very strong framework that's highly regulated with a reasonable prospect of, you know, a decent timeline in respect of project approvals. As long as there's an operator, you're delivering high quality work and you're responsible and deeply engaged with the community.
If you've got all those things in your favor, then I think you can reasonably expect a timely approval. Nick, there's not many places around the Western world today where with formal applications, our documents will go in before the end of the year, that you can receive a mine authorization in about 12- 24 months. It's just not many places left like that around the world and Quebec is one of them. Hence, we're very happy to be working with the Cree in the James Bay region in Quebec.
Excellent. Thanks, Ken. Let's go back to some cesium questions here, and apologies if there's a little bit of overlap on some of these questions, but I do want to get to everyone's questions online here. Can cesium be processed using the same plant as lithium or does it require a separate processing setup?
Yeah, no. The good news for pollucite is that it can be dealt with relatively simply through your crush-draw feed and then translated to ore sorting. In terms of new equipment that's required for the purpose of facilities to deal with pollucite, the answer is it's relatively simple for that first run of concentrate. If there is subsequent processing, then yes, a bit like lithium, you would potentially be thinking about other forms of processing. Maybe flotation if you're going for a higher value concentrate, or in the end, chemical processing like the chemical conversion process. Actually, for pollucite it's pretty similar to the lithium one, just smaller in scale. B ut at a mine level, no, the answer is it's pretty simple. In the case of tantalite for tantalum, it's actually relatively simple as well.
It's another gravity process from your waste stream in spodumene processing that you then run through further gravity devices, so spirals after a little bit more grinding and gravity tables that will help concentrate the tantalite to a saleable product. Again, a relatively simple physical process. There's no chemicals involved in any of those recoveries, whether it's lithium, cesium, or tantalum. Dealt with at a site level on a relatively simple basis and actually often deployed at other lithium mines, especially for tantalite recovery.
Thanks, Ken. Can you share any examples of downstream planning players in the cesium industry?
Yeah, the two. So when I think about the steps in the supply chain, the two more important chemical processes are actually one of our shareholders, Albemarle, who have a facility in Germany, in Western Australia, to process cesium raw materials or pollucites. The other big player in the industry is Sinomine, who have a mine in Canada, albeit we believe, largely depleted, called the Tanco mine, T- A- N- C- O, in Manitoba, that was the mainstay really for cesium supply, actually locally for the most part, but is now largely depleted. The world of cesium has been needing some decent discoveries for some time and wow, have we got one for them.
Indeed. Ken, we've probably had this question in a slightly different form earlier, but I appreciate if you can share any color on the rough economics of cesium in terms of potential annual revenue and earnings based on current spot prices.
Yeah, it's such a closeted industry that it's really difficult to be definitive. Where you see public pricing, you can go to global pricing houses. Shanghai Metal Markets is one. They're pricing cesium carbonate today at about $120,000 a ton. By the time you get to a refined cesium metal, you're in the world of pricing like, you know, like gold today, about $2,500 an ounce. As I alluded to earlier in the call, the majority of the product that's traded is done via other specialty chemicals that would typically come off of, let's say, a cesium carbonate base. There's lots of different cesium chemicals that actually are high value that make their way into specialist industries, optoelectrical industries, like gas industry, you name it. There's isotopes for medical treatments, you name it. Cesium's used a fair bit in special things and typically the products are particularly high value.
When we think about the future of such a project, as we've found at CV13, or over time, the cesium that we realize out of CV5, we might be thinking about participation further downstream to ensure that we maximize the value in the resource. Why wouldn't you? If you have enough global supply to both grow the industry, like in the manufacture of the next wave of solar panel technologies, then why not look to ensure that you can participate in those aims when you've got the minerals that are required to make it happen?
Thanks, Ken. There's another question here about cesium, about the market from an analyst in Sydney. He says. Thanks for the presentation. Interesting to note the application for cesium in solar. Is the high value of cesium likely to be a hurdle for its widespread use in that application? Especially noting that the market is reported to be relatively modest. Is this the case that additional supply lowers prices but also increases demand?
Yeah, okay. This is actually a really good question and I should catch my feedback by saying there is a lot of moving parts in the application of the cesium in the future panels because there is options to determine exactly how much cesium is deployed. As a rough rule of thumb, for example, the world has installed over 1 terawatt hour of solar panel capacity globally up to this point in time. I think today it's like 1.3 terawatt hours or something like that. The first terawatt hour took, I don't know, 25 or 30 years, but the next terawatt hour will only take like, you know, five years. It's pretty incredible how quickly the industry is growing.
To give you some idea of how much this changes the dynamic in cesium markets, if you replaced that 1 terawatt hour with the perovskite cells that applies cesium technology, it would grow cesium demand in the region of about 10- 20 times today's supply. There is huge leverage in the application of this new technology to the future of the terrestrial solar panel industry. Even though a very small proportion makes its way into any one panel, by the time you sum through the total panels, you need a lot more cesium than is available today. That's why we believe our discovery is such an important discovery to the future application of that technology. It's like a virtuous circle.
I forgot to mention the link between the application of new solar technology that vastly improves the efficiency of the panels. The cheaper you can make that electricity to capture, the more likely you're going to be deploying batteries for the purpose of stability and supply. One plays into the other. Once you have a cheaper battery, you want to be able to store more power, you install more panels, you install more panels, you want to be able to store more batteries, especially in an environment where you've been able to improve the panel's efficiency. It's a classic feedback loop that ultimately is really important to the future of cheap renewable energy supply and being able to stabilize grids globally with the application of that higher technology solar panel.
Thanks, Ken. The next question here is that you compared cesium ore products versus, the cesium ore products as spodumene versus lithium carbonate. Can you please give an idea of the composition of salable cesium ore concentrate from payment and its price?
Oh, okay. You need approximately, again, it's highly dependent on the grade, but if you took our Rigel zone, it's 10.5% cesium dioxide, so Cs2O, and you need five of those Rigel tonnes at 10% to make one cesium carbonate tonne. Roughly, that's the way the, you know, the maths works. Yeah. In the end, your contribution of your pollucite concentrate is a pretty high value product in respect of $120,000 a ton worth of, you know, worth of cesium carbonate.
Excellent. Thanks, Ken. Another question from a shareholder here. If you were to sell cesium oxide, where do you envisage that your potential customers would be, Japan, Europe, et cetera?
Yeah, definitely a global audience for four season products. The two big subsets of the industry today are the oil and gas industry and the optoelectrical industry, which is pretty much up to this point in time on the optoelectrical side about medical imaging. Basically anywhere where you're using light, the so-called optoelectrical industry will typically have some sort of application for cesium because cesium's a really important stabilizer in the optoelectrical industry. By the way, that's largely the purpose it serves in the next generation of solar panels, which is another derivation of the optoelectrical industry and probably where the bulk of future demand comes from. It's doing a similar job. It's obviously improving the efficiency of the panel, but it's also making the panel last a lot longer when it's out there in the sun, collecting that energy.
This is largely why the industry wants to migrate to that technology. Up to this point in time, it's been hard to practically deploy because of the lack of abundance of cesium and the effect of closeted supply chains. When you've got a big enough discovery, there's a reasonable chance that you can start to motivate a different demand response, which is obviously why we're happy to be engaged with players downstream to see what they want to achieve and ultimately how we can help make that happen.
Thanks very much, Ken. There's a question here, just a follow-up question to that, on the value of cesium oxide relative to carbonate. What are the steps required to convert oxide to carbonate? Is it a complex process?
Yeah. Now this is also a really good question and believe it or not, in the world of LCT pegmatites, they're all at least a little bit similar. The conversion from pollucite to cesium carbonate actually follows a similar series of steps to that of the lithium chemical conversion world, except in this case, it'll be the cesium chemical conversion world with pollucite as a raw material feedstock. Pollucite is basically calcined, similar to lithium, albeit at a much lower temperature. It's then massed and roasted, digested, and precipitated in much the same way as the lithium world is.
It's a much smaller scale industry, hence the size of equipment and the extent to which you've invested in those chemical conversion facilities is materially cheaper than dealing in the lithium world, where you might be talking about, you know, billions or multiple billions for a large scale lithium chemical conversion facility. We wouldn't see anything like that in the cesium conversion industry because it does operate at a much smaller scale, even when you take into account increasing demand.
Excellent, Ken, thanks for that. Just a couple more here. In previous webinars, you mentioned favoring a midstream lithium sulfate strategy for lithium versus the route to China versus the route that China has followed refining spodumene all the way. Do you see a similar midstream opportunity for cesium carbonate?
Yeah, I'm definitely an advocate for the midstream product in the lithium world. If I'd suggest one thing that's different about pollucite, it's that there's much higher value in pollucite. As a concentrate, it's easier to move around without it being as big an impact on the total cost of the supply chain. I think the answer here is you are less likely to go a midstream route in something like pollucite as compared to spodumene. Yes, I am a fan of the spodumene midstream world and ultimately believe that's where the industry gets to. It's interesting to me that I think we're already starting to see some of this effect. There's been news in the last six months or so about several lithium plants that have commenced. One in Zimbabwe with another one to follow. One's been commissioned down in Brazil.
I think the industry is probably already starting to migrate in that direction. Silver and minerals, we'll start there. Midstream project, I've said before the end of the year. I think the logic in that model is starting to become a bit more obvious and compelling to the industry as a whole. Again, I make the point that that might yet be a really important objective for Patriot , but it's not our first project's development. The base case is the stage development of spodumene concentrate, albeit a pretty significant scale.
Excellent. Thanks, Ken. We'll just do two or three more and try and wrap up before the hour. Can you do a bulk sample of cesium to prove the market and get some early cash in?
Yeah, the bulk sample system is something that's applicable in the James Bay region of Quebec, and it's been done historically around some operations. That's something that we will continue to investigate to work out whether that's a logical path to help in the exploration and assessment of such a project like that that we've discovered in a cesium category. Interestingly, the same thing is probably equally true now for tantalite, tantalum, and lithium itself. Yeah, something that we will continue to investigate and might yet have some merit.
Thanks, Ken. Just two more. Does the VW deal cover the cesium at all, or given it's a different stream, is it separate?
Cesium as a product stream is definitely separate, but of course VW is a very important and valued shareholder. They control 9.9% of our stock and we really enjoy the relationship with VW and PowerCo and looking forward to seeing that continue to grow. They haven't asked us about cesium yet, but who knows, Nicholas? You never know what might be coming around the corner for VW, but yeah, no link whatsoever in any of those other co-product streams, whether it's tantalite, pollucite, and the contained tantalum and cesium, they are completely separate.
Okay, great. Thanks, Ken. There was a question. Sorry I skipped over earlier. I'll just quickly deal with it. The investor said that he was aware of some concerns that may have been raised by investors over the body of water or the lake near some of the deposits. Is that a concern in any shape or form?
No, no, look. Yeah, we often get asked about the lake, Nick, because, yeah, it's such an obvious sort of thing to be saying in respect of our project area. I would simply make the point. There isn't really a mine that is developed in Quebec or in the north of Canada more generally that doesn't impact a lake. Their systems are very, very disciplined and progressive in ensuring that you can temporarily modify the environment for the purpose of mining, which includes the disturbance of the lake. As long as you are sensible, you've done high quality work and you've engaged deeply with the community, there is reasonable pathways through to seeing that element of your project approved. We firmly believe that can be dealt with within our broader mine authorization process.
Fantastic. Thanks, Ken. I think we've sort of covered exhaustively the world of cesium, so that's been fantastic. I might just leave it to you for some parting comments and also just, I guess one question we've had. You know, obviously it's been a tough time for investors in the lithium space and people often look to you for guidance as to where the market's headed. It'd be nice just to get some parting thoughts from you as to whether we're finally entering a lithium spring. I know you covered off on that in your presentation, but is it better times ahead for us in the lithium world?
Yeah. I do really genuinely believe that we've crossed a threshold in that question of what's going on with respect to support. The last two to three years has been all about what China did to inspire novel sources of supply to backfill the market when there was a period of demand growth post COVID. I firmly believe we're now looking at the other side and it's actually so much more about a demand story now. Just being brutally honest about it, Nicholas, I firmly believe Western analysts are missing the real story about what's going on in China. China is so dominant in the lithium ion or the new energy space more broadly and you could even argue critical minerals as a whole. People are underestimating how quickly they're changing the game and it's much faster than Western analysts are giving it credit for.
That's why I'm firmly of the view that demand conditions likely outstrip their reading on the market and that means we're due for a series of upgrades. Let me give you just a classic example. Here we are in July 2025. Growth has already been proven in vehicles to be in the range of approximately 29%- 30% per annum. EV growth in stationary energy storage, we're already up 51% year to date and that really is the market, Nick. EVs and stationary energy storage. Yes, there's legacy lithium consumed in the scheme of things now, it's so unimportant, almost to be immeasurable. Yet you look at most Western analysts and their forecasts for 2025 and they're sitting in the range of like 20%, probably at best growth.
Now, does anyone reasonably believe that in the second half of the year absolute growth is going to be zero, so that you can achieve 20% growth according to their forecast? Honestly, they got it wrong, in which case the sector as a whole is going to be due a range of demand upgrade at the very least. The net effect of all that over more time over the next 6, 12, 18 months is that growth outstrips their demand forecasts and therefore the market rebalances much faster than they're giving it credit for. For example, people talk about the market being back in balance by the end of the decade. That is a gross misread, I think, of where the market is really headed and most of it will be motivated by those low cost sales coming out of China.
Hopefully that gives everyone a little bit of heart. We're still in the right sector. Lithium's not going away, and the right projects are ultimately going to attract the capital. We firmly believe we've got one of the best, an LCT pegmatite that is just extreme in each category. I consider myself really lucky to be working on it and for that matter with the team.
Fantastic, Ken. You're heading down under, I believe, in the near future for the Diggers Conference and other engagements here. A good opportunity for investors in Australia to catch up with you in the coming weeks.
Yes, of course, mate. No, looking forward to getting back to Australia. I'll miss the last bit of the Montreal summer. Everyone's out on their terraces enjoying the warm sunshine, but nonetheless, good to catch up with everyone back in Australia and I'm looking forward to meeting some more shareholders and hopefully new shareholders.
Fantastic. Thanks very much, Ken. And thank you to Olivier as well. Just a reminder to anyone who did have any unanswered questions, both Ken and Olivier would be more than happy to take your questions offline or to set up a separate phone call or Teams with you after this webinar. Look, thanks very much, that was extremely informative. We appreciate your time this morning in Australia or evening, your time. Reminder to everyone that a recording of this will be released later today on social channels and the PMET website. Thank you very much for joining us. Thanks for a tremendous range of questions and a very interactive session. Ken and Olivier, thanks so much for your time and we look forward to seeing you again very soon.
Thank you, Nick. Thanks, everyone.
Real pleasure. Nicholas, thanks for having us. Much appreciated.