Why Lithium?

Lithium is on the list of the 35 minerals considered critical to the economic and national security of the United States as first published by the U.S. Department of the Interior on May 18, 2018. In June 2021, the U.S. Department of Energy published a report titled “National Blueprint for Lithium Batteries 2021-2030” (henceforth, the “NBLB Report”) which was developed by the Federal Consortium for Advanced Batteries (“FCAB”), a collaboration by the U.S. Departments of Energy, Defense, Commerce, and State. According to the Report, one of the main goals of this U.S. government effort is to “secure U.S. access to raw materials for lithium batteries.” In the NBLB Report, Ms. Jennifer M. Granholm, the U.S. Secretary of Energy, states: “Lithium-based batteries power our daily lives from consumer electronics to national defense. They enable electrification of the transportation sector and provide stationary grid storage, critical to developing the clean-energy economy.”

The NBLB Report summarizes as follows the U.S. government’s views on the needs for lithium and the expected growth of the lithium battery market:

“A robust, secure, domestic industrial base for lithium-based batteries requires access to a reliable supply of raw, refined, and processed material inputs…”

“The worldwide lithium battery market is expected to grow by a factor of 5 to 10 in the next decade.”

Our Minas Gerais Lithium Project encompasses 85 mineral rights totaling approximately 468 km² which include seven main clusters of prospective mineralization: Neves (currently being explored by drilling campaign and referred to as the “Neves Project”), Coronel Murta, Eastern Properties, Itinga, Salinas, Santa Clara, and Tesouras.

Several of our mineral rights are located adjacent to or near mineral rights that belong to a large publicly traded competitor company which has demonstrated through extensive drilling the presence of lithium deposits totaling over 100 million tons, according to its publicly available filings.