Mr. Secker: Canada Lithium is the developer of the first of the new wave of lithium carbonate projects in North America. We will be developing the Quebec Lithium Project, which is located just north of Val-d'Or in Quebec. We are currently finishing a bankable feasibility study that will be completed by the end of this year. We want to start construction of the project in the second quarter 2011 and be in production by fourth quarter 2012. What we are going to do is basically build the first large-scale lithium carbonate producer in North America that will produce battery-grade lithium carbonate for the North American, European and Asian markets.
TWST: If we were speaking 12 months ago, what would be the goals and expectations you have for the company? What would be your performance report for the past 12 months?
Mr. Secker: Twelve months ago, we were at the exploration stage. At that time, we had an historic resource, which was about 15 million tons of ore in the ground. Over the past 12 months, we've significantly expanded that to 31.6 million tons in measured and indicated mineral resource and another 39 million tons in inferred resource. We have a world-class deposit that is capable of sustaining our mining operation for up to 50 years. So it's a long-term project. We have also done a significant amount of metallurgical test work. We have produced marketing samples that have gone to our marketing partner Mitsui, in Japan, and those samples meet all the requirements for battery-grade lithium carbonate. At the same time, we have completed a pre-feasibility study, which has demonstrated the economics of the project with a capital cost of about 148 million and operating costs of about 2,815 per ton, which is equivalent to about 1.27 per pound of lithium carbonate. The pre-feasiblity demonstrated that we have a project that is both financially viable and technically viable. We had a fairly busy 12 months!
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