Nemaska to graduate to TSX mainboard, achieves financing milestones

TORONTO (miningweekly.com) – Quebec-based project developer Nemaska Lithium on Wednesday announced that the TSX had conditionally approved the listing of its common shares.

Listing of the shares was subject to the currently TSX-V-listed company’s compliance with all of the requirements of TSX on or before September 8, and closing of a share offering for at least C$50-million.

Nemaska advised that the root stock symbol ‘NMX’ had been reserved for its use upon closing of the offering and listing on the TSX, which were expected to take place simultaneously.

Meanwhile, the company on Tuesday reported that the City of Shawinigan had obtained the zoning approval required for permitting the site that will house Nemaska’s Phase 1 plant and the future commercial hydromet plant.

With the completion of this milestone Nemaska received the second C$5-million tranche from Ressources Québec, a subsidiary of Investissement Québec, acting as a mandatary for the provincial government. The company had also received the first instalment of C$6-million from Johnson Matthey Battery Materials (JMBM).

The private placement with Ressources Québec totalled C$10-million, while the JMBM transaction comprised a total of C$12-million. The funds for both transactions were held in escrow pending the company achieving certain project milestones.

“Our next steps will be to refurbish the building to meet our Phase 1 Plant needs. We have spoken to our electrolyser supplier and we expect to receive the units in the fall of this year, which is in line with our expectations. We are anticipating to be in start-up mode in December 2016 with commissioning in Q1 2017 and commercial samples to follow,” president and CEO Guy Bourassa commented.

The C$38-million Phase 1 project was fully funded for two years, of which C$12-million came from JMBM up-front payments, C$13-million from a grant from Sustainable Development Technologies Canada, C$3-million grant from Technoclimat programme through the Bureau de l'efficacité et de l'innovation énergétiques of the Ministère de l'Énergie et des Ressources naturelles and a C$10-million equity investment by Ressources Québec.

INTEGRATED PLAN
Nemaska’s objective is to become a lithium hydroxide/lithium carbonate producer and supplier to the emerging lithium battery market, which was mainly driven by electric vehicles, cell phones, tablets and other consumer products.

The company had been conducting exploration and development work on its 100%-owned spodumene deposit known as the Whabouchi property, located in the Eeyou Istchee James Bay Region in the north of the province.

Nemaska received its municipal permit for its Phase 1 Plant on June 1, and could now proceed with the building modifications, the site preparation and installation of the Phase 1 equipment.

The company had also developed its own proprietary electrolysis technology to produce lithium hydroxide and lithium carbonate from spodumene concentrate for which it had filed 31 patent applications represented by seven different patent families.

The first granted patent (Canadian Patent 2,874,917) will be issued on June 21 and the company had also received a notice of allowance for the corresponding patent application (No. 14/404,466) in the US. The company expected other patents to be issued over the next 12 months in various countries, including Canada and the US, as a result of accelerated examination processes.

Nemaska aimed to obtain patent protection in the countries where the majority of lithium hydroxide and lithium carbonate was produced, sold and used, such as Canada, the US, Europe, Australia, Japan, Korea, China and India.