CEO Bernard Aylward discusses the latest update on the company’s Bougouni Lithium Project in Southern Mali with Proactive’s Stephen Gunnion.
Stephen Gunnion: Hello, you’re watching Proactive. Joining me is Kodal Minerals CEO Bernard Aylward. Bernard, good to speak with you again. And you’re out with another one of your regular updates on your Bougouni lithium project in Southern Mali, and essentially, you remain on track and on budget for first production at the end of the year, despite some minor delays.
Bernard Aylward: Yeah. Good morning Stephen. You’re right. You know, we’d like to keep shareholders informed and provide regular updates of progress at Bougouni. Clearly, this is a key project for us, it’s the main focus of Kodal. In our preparations, we always had some plans for things not to go perfectly. Up to date, I’d say we probably have been well and truly ahead, and things are going very well. Some things are out of our control, of course, and shipping – we all know we are at the mercy of the waves and the wind. Some slight delay, but everything else is going ahead according to plan. We’re very busy with completing the foundations, full civil concreting. We’ve commenced mining with the stripping of the Ngoualana open pit, and that’s going very well. So, in a lot of ways, we’re ahead of where we expected to be. And importantly, we’re on budget and we’re still confident about our schedule to be in production before the end of 2024. So a really exciting time ahead.
Stephen Gunnion: So you mentioned that the major footings for the DMS plant are completed. So as soon as that DMS material arrives on the ship, it’s been rerouted slightly, but you can get going with that.
Bernard Aylward: Exactly. Exactly right. It comes to site. It’s, as we’ve always said, a smallish plant, 1 million tonnes per annum, pretty much modular. We’re prepared to have that erected very quickly once it arrives on site. Part of the process of West Africa is making sure we’re fully prepared for all contingencies. We have logistics coordinators organized. We’re expecting well over 20 trucks a day arriving on site for the majority of August and September. We’re expecting to have a lot of construction workers on site. So, plenty of preparation time, plenty of organization that we’re all prepared for a significant push over the next few months.
Stephen Gunnion: And just a reminder, this project is fully funded through Hainan, isn’t it?
Bernard Aylward: Exactly right. We’re very clear it’s a joint venture development with Hainan being 51% ultimate owner and us being 49%, but still significantly involved. We’re very keen to get this developed, and I think it’s a major feather in the cap of our team. A lot of guys have worked with this from actually acquiring the project, the very first drill hole, and are still working with this today. We’re all very happy with the way things are progressing and very happy with the partner we have in Hainan, who, in recent discussions, have very clearly supported us for the long haul and are actually making considerable more investments in the lithium sector.
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