Don Bubar on the business of lithium today

“The lithium business it is all about finding where to position yourself in the marketplace with the type of resource you have. Ours is a different one with different minerology than many of the resources that are being looked at now to serve the battery industry. As you recall, historically we looked at it primarily as an opportunity to produce an industrial mineral product for specialty glass and ceramic products. That is still a pretty big market out there. That is an opportunity for us to serve especially now that lithium is becoming more scarce for the glassmakers out there now that the battery industry has come along with a huge appetite gobbling up a lot of the available supply.” States Don Bubar, President, CEO and Director of Avalon Advanced Materials Inc. (TSX: AVL | OTCQX: AVLNF), in an interview with InvestorIntel Corp. CEO Tracy Weslosky.

Tracy Weslosky: Don you have just put out your East Kemptville Tin Site PEA results. That is a former producer and is an advanced stage project. Can you tell us what these PEA results meant for us as investors? 

Don Bubar: Basically Tracy they are confirming that it is an economic proposition for us. While it is small-scale the whole approach has been to do something innovative there in terms of how we can approach this brownfield site with a model for addressing the long-term environmental liability there, remediating that, fully rehabilitating the site while extracting value out of the waste materials that were left behind on the site. We needed to show that that could be done economically. Effectively the PEA results confirm that. Will not make a lot of money, but it will be a really good interesting new model for how one can apply innovative thinking and new technologies to these brownfield sites that tend to be treated as perpetual liabilities as opportunities for entrepreneurs to extract value out of these sites.

Tracy Weslosky: Okay, well, that sounds very exciting to me. The industry has always acknowledged you for being a leader in sustainability and this type of forward thinking. You also have an advanced stage project in Kenora, Ontario, lithium. Can you tell us how that project is proceeding? 

Don Bubar: That is coming along slowly. As you know, with the lithium business it is all about finding where to position yourself in the marketplace with the type of resource you have. Ours is a different one with different minerology than many of the resources that are being looked at now to serve the battery industry. As you recall, historically we looked at it primarily as an opportunity to produce an industrial mineral product for specialty glass and ceramic products. That is still a pretty big market out there. That is an opportunity for us to serve especially now that lithium is becoming more scarce for the glassmakers out there now that the battery industry has come along with a huge appetite gobbling up a lot of the available supply. The resource is ideally suited to that with this high purity lithium mineral petalite. We are now looking at that as, sort of, near-term development opportunity, get into production, produce the industrial mineral product, which is much lower capex than trying to make the battery material, establish an operating profitable business. Then build on that by expanding, as you see, the opportunities to further serve some of the growing markets going forward. We think that is a much more conservative and less risky way to get started in the lithium business and position yourself with a stage development model and open to different possibilities on how to serve the markets…to access the complete interview, click here

Disclaimer: Avalon Advanced Materials Inc. is an advertorial member of InvestorIntel Corp.