You may remember our report about a Canadian company’s plans to turn the salty subterranean waters of south Arkansas into a source of lithium for batteries in cellphones and electric vehicles.
Now there’s considerably more money behind the talk.
Standard Lithium Inc. of Vancouver, British Columbia, has raised $10 million in equity financing for the project, which involves linking a pilot lithium extraction plant to the existing infrastructure for pulling bromine from underground brine fields near El Dorado. The modular pilot plant will test Standard Lithium’s novel process for extracting lithium from the same well waters that have yielded bromine, an ingredient in fire retardants, for a half-century.
Standard’s partner in the venture is Lanxess, the global specialty chemical company based in Cologne, Germany.
“We worked furiously to meet regulatory requirements and to close financing in a timely way so that we can focus all attention on the pilot plant,” Standard CEO Robert Mintak told Whispers last week. “Our pilot plant under construction in Ontario is on schedule, and we will deliver it to Arkansas in the second quarter, late June.”
Plans have long called for building and testing the pilot plant in Canada, then shipping it in containers to be reassembled at one of three El Dorado bromine production sites operated by Lanxess.
“We have contracts in place to make that happen, along with a team of engineers, specialists to put the pieces in place to get the pilot plant located and installed in El Dorado,” Mintak added.
Financing plans, however, bogged down as lithium companies took a beating in the stock market last year. “News of gluts in lithium coming online caused challenges in share prices because investors became exhausted, but most of that prognosis was way off the mark.”
‘A Unique Situation’
In any case, Mintak was relieved to raise the $10 million by selling stock in Standard Lithium to Canadian investors. The financing was publicized north of the border but not in the U.S, which has different securities regulations.
“We’re quite happy the market unrest didn’t affect us, and it may have made our project more attractive to investors,” he said.
Mintak said Standard Lithium minimized risk by partnering with Lanxess, a known quantity. “We’re working in a place with an existing infrastructure and with a company that’s the largest Arkansas bromine company, with access to all necessary raw materials, and in a state that’s one of the best business-friendly jurisdictions in the country. It’s a unique situation globally.”
The pilot plant is being built by Zeton Inc. of Burlington, Ontario, which specializes in building modular test facilities for the oil and chemical industries.
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