Come on Mattawa and government lets get this project derisked...

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https://roskill.com/news/batteries-interview-with-sir-mick-davis/

Batteries: Interview with Sir Mick Davis

Roskill’s Chief Economist, Neal Brewster, interviewed Sir Mick Davis about his latest venture – Vision Blue Resources – this week. The fund was launched late last year and is focussed on investing in battery and technology minerals linked to electric vehicle and grid storage. It has already raised US$300 million in capital and undertaken significant investments in graphite and vanadium projects in Madagascar and Kazakhstan, through NextSource and Ferro Alloys.

Sir Mick answered a range of questions covering Vision Blue’s investment strategy and the opportunities it sees in the market, along with advice for mine producers and developers seeking funding. He addressed issues around access to capital in the fast-growing battery raw materials sector, vertical integration and the importance and impact of ESG issues. He rounded off with his views on the “super cycle” debate.

Roskill View

Sir Mick’s continued passion for investing in the mining sector came strongly across. As the pattern of global growth and end use markets have evolved that passion has similarly evolved; from investing in coal and industrial metals – on which Sir Mick’s highly successful career at Billiton and Xstrata was built – to clean energy related investments.

As Roskill’s own analysis also supports, developing enough new supply of battery raw materials required to be able to meet ambitious global renewable energy targets will require developing a whole new set of greenfield projects with very different technical and other challenges to more traditional mining investments. Many of these investments will initially be small scale, but with the ability to become much more valuable over time. Sir Mick has identified this as this a particular opportunity for long term funds such as his, who along with capital bring credibility from successfully developing mining projects in the past and knowledge of mining and processing into this space. The major mining companies who have traditionally provided the bulk of investment in the mining sector are finding it difficult to find or execute such projects due their relative size and a broader loss of capacity and willingness to invest in recent years, as well as an underlying dependence on higher carbon assets.

On other issues, Sir Mick sees there being profound changes in the relationship between mining producers and end use customers driven by both ESG and technical or quality factors. This will lead to greater integration between mining and downstream processing. Focus on ESG is fundamentally seen as an “issue of care” which investors cannot ignore.

On the “super cycle” debate, Sir Mick sees that a decisive shift in the political consensus on way in which energy is produced and consumed has occurred. His thesis is that this will lead a period of shortages and higher prices and margins in electric vehicle and material raw material markets. Over the longer run, recycling and new supply will lead to prices levelling out, but that might not be for some time.