Kodal Minerals (LSE:KOD) — Hainan Financing Completion.

0:00 Good morning, and welcome to the KODAL MINERALS PLC investor presentation. Throughout this recorded presentation, will be in listen only mode. Questions are encouraged and can be submitted at any time by the Q and A tab situated in the right hand corner of your screen. Just simply type in your questions and press send. The company may not be in a position to answer every question it receives during the meeting itself. Have the company will review all questions submitted today and publish responses where it is appropriate to do so. Before we begin, I'd like to submit the following poll. I'd now like to hand you over to CEO, Bernard Elwood. Good morning, Giselle.

0:33 Good morning, Alessandro, and good morning all viewers and attendees. We understand there's well over a 120 people logged in at the moment to listen to our presentation, and we can say, right, today, we're very proud to have completed this funding transaction for the Burgoonie development of the Burgoonie Lithium Project. I'm sure you're all well aware. We announced back in January this year the $100,000,000 investment directly into the Bagoonie Lithium project, followed and accompanied by a $17,750,000 investment into KODAL PLC. That provides a great support of funding for both our project as well as our parent company, and we are anticipating using those funds to rapidly develop the Boonie project. And this front slide here that you're looking at now, we're all pretty happy here.

1:33 This is a small sign, but a start of our development, the access to the DMS plant, our mining company in Mali, Limin de Lithium de Magoonie, and a bit of the team standing around there that we had visited the site just a few weeks ago. Lots of activity and a lot more activity to to start up now. During the course of this presentation, I'm joined with our operations director, Steve Zaninovich, and if you've read the announcement today, you'll see that we are confirming completion. We've issued the shares to our partner, Mao, and Xing Mao was part of the Hainan Group, a fantastic partner.

2:19 We've worked closely together over a long period. We both have the same goal, and that is to develop this project as quickly as possible and get ourselves into production. I'd like to move through. There's a disclaimer that people can read at their leisure, but really the important things that we want to talk today about our company, about our project, and about our future. So the key things that set us apart with KODAL and now our joint venture with the Hainan Group and the Buguni project in Mali, number one, we're fully licensed and fully funded for the development. We're all targeting first spodumene production in late twenty twenty four.

3:08 No doubt you would have heard us say many times that we anticipate being able to complete the construction and move to production within twelve months from receipt of funds. Again, I apologize to Steve because this is a noose around his neck, but that is our target, and we're all working towards that. And with that aim, that leads us to being aiming to be the first London listed lithium producer. We think that's a great target. We think it represents a real nice milestone for the company and starting us off on a great position to continue to grow KODL. The funding the full funding is just under a $118,000,000. At the moment, the DMS plant the offtake is restricted to the DMS plant for a three year period, but we will be looking to continue with our partner.

4:04 We expect that there'll be a lot of interest in our product. We currently pegged that to the market price, so we expect to be able to achieve the best result. We think we've got a number one team in Mali led by myself and Steve from the technical point of view, our land manager, Mohammed Nyare, country manager in in Mali, and also in Kotubois. He's done a fantastic job in ensuring that our tenure remains free of concern. We're looking to start the development with a stage one DMS plant at our Inglala prospect where coarse grain mineralization responds fantastically well to DMS, and we expect to get a very good recovery and produce a very good product.

4:56 Stage two, which we're looking to fund out of the out of the cash flow from stage one, will be to build a flotation plant that allows us to mine and process the ore from the Boumou and Sogoloballet prospects, which are both looking like opportunities to continue to grow our resource and underpin a long term development of Bugouti. The stage two will effectively double more than double our production with stage one producing around 125,000 tonnes per annum and stage two currently looking to produce around 230,000 tonnes per annum, moving us to quite a large, quite a significant producer of spodumene.

5:48 Hopefully, and I know we have on the line a lot of interested investors in KODAL. You would have all seen that we announced an increase in our resource yesterday, and that increase was underpinned by the first drilling program we completed since 2019. Obviously, we had a few hiccups along the way with COVID, with some issues holding us back in the field. We had applied for and received our mining license during that time, and we were working to complete the funding package. We started the drilling program in mid January this year, drilled through to about May.

6:33 That first program has increased our resource by over 40%. It has highlighted the opportunity that we have at the Boumou prospect, where we've increased that by well over 230%, and this prospect remains open for over 700 meters along strike, again, highlighting the opportunity to increase further this resource. The key for us, and it's always been the key for us, is to try and move quickly through the next phases of development. So we intend to have drill rigs back at Boone before the end of November. The program will focus on firstly, the extension and exploration drilling, but secondly, and equally as importantly, looking to do infill and definition drilling so we can improve that resource confidence from inferred to indicated, to look to provide samples for metallurgical testing, as well as begin the preliminary geotechnical test work so that we can move quickly to a finalization of an open pit plan.

7:41 The job resource is based only on three prospects, and most of you will have heard me say many times that at Boumou, we have many identified pegmatite bodies, including Burgundy South that we drilled this year, Kola that we drilled this year.

8:00 Historically, we have drilled Solgolar, Phylom Bay, and Orchard Prospects, all returning mineralized intersections, good grade and good width that we anticipate being able to follow-up with further drilling to expand this resource. As I said earlier, stage one focuses initially only on the M'Guilana deposit, and of course, we'll be focusing exploration on veins around and nearby to that to try and expand the life of that DMS plant. And stage two, initially based on the mining of Boumou and Sogolobale through a flotation plant. Great opportunity for us to continue to explore, expand, and develop the journey.

8:48 Just a couple of key points I wanna make about our partner, and I'm sure, again, you're all aware that we spend quite a lot of time choosing to partner for our development. We had a range of opportunities and a range of offers for this this opportunity, but we looked at Hainan, and we understood them to be an existing mining company in China, over sixty years of experience of mining and processing chiefly in iron ore, but also involved in other commodities as well as and as well as oil. They're well funded. They're supported by a parent entity, Fosun International Limited, which is a major Chinese conglomerate with investments throughout the world in pharmaceutical, in in entertainment, and now their first investment into African mining.

9:48 The $100,000,000 investment takes Hainan to 51% position in our subsidiary UK registered company, KODAL MINERALS PLC, and KODAL MINERALS is the company that will be the sole owner of Lamingo Lithium Dobagoonie and be responsible for the development. We've estimated a $65,000,000 capital construction for the DMS plant at Inglala, and reviews have been ongoing of that capital, and we're very confident that we can achieve that within within the period that we've set ourselves a target for. In addition, Hainan have been come on to KODAL MINERALS PLC.

10:39 The investment of 17,750,000 US has positioned them at 14.72% of the shares. They are now our new major shareholder.

10:51 We will have a board appointee, and it's been nominated as mister David Tang, who is the vice chairman of Hainan Mining and has extensive corporate and operational experience. So another good asset for us as we look to grow KODAL outside of Burgoonie. We think we have a fantastic opportunity now to work on our existing assets, the gold portfolio throughout Mali and Kotkivwa, as well as take the skills that we've developed from Buguni to continue to review and acquire additional lithium projects as a primary focus, but other battery metals throughout West Africa and possibly Africa.

11:40 We think we've got a great skill set that'll allow us to maximize the value of these funds that we've received. So now I'd like, Steve to say a few words. This is focusing on his current activity down in South Africa where he's working with our consultants, DRA International, and looking to finalize the design of our DMS plan. So, Steve, over to you. Thank you, Bernard. Yes. I'm I'm in Johannesburg where DRA's head offices are. We've progressed pretty well with the design of the DMS plant.

12:26 We've submitted our change notification to the Department of Mines, has been received without objection, which is a positive for us and underpins the plans that we've set in place with Hainan. I'm here with Hainan's operations sorry, project manager, mister Jerry Gao, and we've undertaken a full design review of the plant. Now the plant design is actually 90% complete as we speak. And thanks to Hainan, as Bernard has said, a great partner providing those proceeds in August to us of $3,500,000 has allowed us to progress the design with DRA. We've also progressed infrastructure designs with Knight Pisold in Perth. So the tailings dam design is already 75%.

13:16 And also the pit design we've completed with Ology in Western Australia, another consultant very experienced in West Africa as Mike Pizzarda. And with the updated resource, we're now undertaking a new pit optimization which should add tons and mine life to the DMS plant. At the same time as we keep in the back of our minds our two stage development approach, looking to get our flotation plant design started soon after we complete our DMS installations so that the current plan being in in two years' time after commissioning DMS will be commissioning our float plant, which will double the production out of our DMS plant. The DMS plant is estimated to produce one twenty five thousand tonnes per annum of concentrate, which will be exported out of the Port Of San Pedro in Cote D'Ivoire.

14:19 So getting back to where we are here in Johannesburg, the design is is well progressed, as I said. And with the, funding now in place, we'll be moving really quickly to purchase all the long lead items we need in order to meet our twelve month, delivery period from from this milestone of receiving those funds.

14:46 As Bernard said, we're fully funded now for the project development. And with our team on-site, we've we've had very good response from our community. We've got a full time, social responsibility manager. He is his name is Dembele. He's a local Malian with twenty five years experience in in mining and and working with the communities. We've had very positive response from the communities to the project. We've had numerous sessions and set up a community consultation committee, including all of the villages within our license area. And their understanding of of the project development, the project timeline, and also they've been very excited about us commencing construction with the access road, which will be shared with the communities.

15:45 We also recently provided some assistance to the local school, at Kolosukra, which is the nearest village to the Angolana Pit by assisting them financially with the government support to provide a teacher to a school that hasn't had a teacher for the last three years. So all in place now to commence procurement and meet our twelve month timeline.

16:17 We say thank you for attending and back over to any questions that that the listeners may have. Perfect. Bernard and Steve, thank you very much for your presentation. I'll just bring your cameras back up at this point. Ladies and gentlemen, please do continue to submit your questions just by using the q and a tab, which is situated on the top right hand corner of your screen. But just while the company take a few moments to review those questions submitted today, I'd like to remind you that recording of this presentation along with a copy of the slides and the published q and a can be accessed by your investor dashboard. As you can see, we received a number of questions throughout today's presentation. If I could just ask you to read out those questions and give responses where it is appropriate to do so, I'll pick up from you both at the end. Okay.

17:05 Well, thanks very much. And I think I spoke too soon at the start there, Alessandra, when I said a 120 or over a 120. I think you've just said to me there's over a 180 listeners. So, again, thanks for the interest. We we think we've got a fantastic project. We think it's a fantastic opportunity, and it seems that a lot of you do too. So let me start reading a few of the questions. A couple here with no name, pre submitted. Number one is talking about our offtake agreements, and the question is, are there any prepayment or sweepers in the offtake agreement? The simple answer to that is no.

17:52 The first, we have not signed or completed, but we have an agreement with the Hainan Group to initially provide the first 20% of production from Burgundy as an offtake. That's, as I said earlier, linked to the market rate. So, clearly, we will be achieving best possible price for that. I think we would agree that a sweetener in terms of the amount of funding that they're putting in and the development of the project is more than enough for us in that case. And you may recall that when we first started work at Burgundy in 2016, we had an investment from a Singapore based group called Rixin International.

18:44 Rixin don't have any straight up rights to offtake. They have a right of first refusal for anything more anything up to 80% of the product. So we anticipate that we will always be achieving at least the market price. No sweeteners or anything else involved. Second question here, pre pre submitted. So before our discussion was talking about our gold assets, and in particular, the Nile project in Kotigua.

19:22 And, really, clearly clearly, we we are confident we've made the right decision with our focus on the Goony and the lithium projects. They represent fantastic value for the company. Our gold assets are good quality assets, and as this question points out, MINERALS looks like it's close to a resource estimation. We do anticipate going back to drill further at MINERALS probably in the New Year. We would expect that the completion of that program and a period of review afterwards may be the point where we would declare a maiden resource for Nile. And our FATU project in Mali, again, historically, companies have reported resources. We weren't happy that they were satisfactory to our standard.

20:19 Work will be ongoing there. We've identified a number of other possibilities for further exploration, and there will definitely be some work at our gold projects. I'll move on to a couple of questions that have come in while we were talking, and I'll just I'll just take one first, and this is referring to our mining license transfer. This has been slightly difficult position for us because it's actually a government issue in Mali currently, where Mali are undertaking or have been undertaking an audit of the mining industry.

21:06 They have introduced a new mining code and are looking to publish the regulations around that mining code. While that process has been ongoing and it's been ongoing for nearly a year now, The government has frozen activities on licenses such as renewals, applications, and in our case, transfers. We have confirmed with the DNGM that our license remains in good standing. It is held by our company, Future Minerals, SARL, that was initially awarded the license. When the situation becomes available that we can transfer the license, we will. We have everything prepared for that, and we have had a lot of discussions with the government. So when when the time when that opportunity is available, we will do that as quickly as possible.

22:02 Question about cash flow, share buyback or dividends in the future. The future is a long way off. What I would say and what you've seen in this presentation today is that we have a lot of ideas for the development of Bagoonie. We're looking to use cash flow from our DMS to build our flotation plant. We probably are expecting the first three to four years while they'll be profitable and while the cash flow model suggests that the DMS has a payback period of about two months, has an IRR of over 270% representing a fantastic post data project. We do intend to continue to expand Boonie.

22:50 So in the immediate short term, we believe the best use of the funds is to continue to invest in Boonie to expand and develop that project. So, obviously, you know, I'm a shareholder. Steve's a shareholder. We do consider what we think is best for shareholders, and at the moment, that's using money at Bogoonie. That follow-up question to that, both of those are by DAS4, is that the question relates to Hainan, and are they looking to put more funding for the flotation? And and and with the reference here saying that we've previously stated looking to have flotation by 2026.

23:43 We we, in our discussions with Hainan, yes, both parties agree that capital is required for the flotation. Both parties agree that they'll be looking to use the funds for that. Hainan are looking to make further investments in Africa and have indicated that they will be continuing to support the development of Burgundy. 2026, I think the noose is already tied around Steve's neck, so I'm not sure that we could probably put more on that. But at the moment, we are looking actually to try and advance the flotation as quickly as possible. During the talk, you would have seen the increase in numbers of Burgundy Ubumu prospect, and we think that's fantastic opportunity to get in and expand that, and that underpins the flotation plant. And the more we demonstrate there, the more the pressure is to bring that flotation forward. So that's the use of funds and highlands interest.

24:58 Barry A is asking, any plans to list anywhere other than AIM? And not at the moment. We think AIM has been a good market for us, good access to capital, and strong support for us as a company. Gold numbers. Question about gold numbers from Matt W. And, Matt, I think my earlier quest earlier answer there was we're looking to do work at MINERALS PLC. Looking to have prob possibly resource numbers in the New Year. Steve, maybe you. A question about spodumene concentrate. Can you, Bernard, just please read it out? It's not showing up on my screen at the moment.

25:47 Oh, sorry. So the question is from Steve c. How much spodumene concentrate are we likely to produce based on revised upgrade MRE? So the the MRE increase at Boumou especially, what we're looking at from the DMS side, there'll probably be a slight upgrade in in amount of spodumene we'll produce. At the moment, we've got four years at an average of a 125,000 tonnes per annum of of concentrate of spodumene delivered. And the numbers we've seen and we're running a bit optimization at the moment, we should extend that marginally. It's not a a huge increase at Angolana.

26:34 At Boumou, the increase is significant. So the the flotation stage two with the addition of Bumu, we believe we'll get ten years at average 230,000 kilotons per annum now if everything converts. So we do have to do the studies, the pit optimizations to look at the expanded case, and that's not to mention Bernard's, Noose, which is additional resource coming out of our project area, which we're very confident of. We will end up, at least, in in my opinion, ten years of flotation after the four plus years of DMS.

27:16 Okay. Thanks, Steve. Quick question about permits. Are there any more permits licenses that are required by KODAL from the Mali authorities? That's from Richard S. And no, we believe we're fully permitted for the production and moving to the moving to the export of concentrate. Richard, the feasibility study that we submitted covered all aspects of the licensing in terms of the explosives plant in in terms of power, in terms of water extraction, building camps, roads, etcetera. We completed our environmental study in around 2018, completed our feasibility in 2019.

28:07 We were very proactive in moving quickly on that, and that that was a key for us to be able to attract this funding and attract this interest in our project. I see a question here from Neil. Sorry. Neil Neil w. A very simple question. And, Neil, I am afraid I can't give you a straight answer because your question is share price drop, question mark, question mark, is perplexing, but that's the market. Fundamentally, our company is better today than it has been for many years. Fully funded, fully supported, fully permitted, great opportunity, and I think a share price drop is temporary.

28:57 Matthew S. Steve, this is probably something right for you now given your position. Is the final design for the PM DMS plant complete? Do you have a manufacturer in place ready to start fabricating steel? When will the manufacture start?

29:16 Thanks, Bernard. The the DMS plant design is 95% complete. We are undertaking a design review in South Africa at the moment with the DRA Global who have undertaken the design. The the manufacturer will take place in South Africa, for the the DMS modules and the crushing modules, and we're looking to place an order on that before the end of the year. And those are the long lead items at the project. So manufacture will start immediately after we place an order, which we're looking to do by the end of November. Okay. Thanks.

30:01 Thanks, Steve. Another question here from Paul who I think might be a long term holder. Paul is saying that questioning, does a 117,750,000 allow for a KODAL cap to be provided? Probably, Paul. We had some available for shareholders at our AGM. We have some available with us from time to time. If you do bump into me, let me know. And then the next one is from, I think. Sorry if I'm sorry if I mispronounced that. Querying a short a share consolidation eventually.

30:50 Again, I don't really wanna speculate on the on the future of of what we're doing. Obviously, we have a lot of shares on issue, but we are a heavily traded stock, not just in number, but also in volume in in value. We are a well supported stock. We don't see a lot of benefit at the moment in a consolidation. However, in the future, if we're looking at other transactions and areas where we may be able to benefit from a consolidation, the company would consider it. The next question is from John M.

31:36 And, Steve, perhaps you can give a first few points, and then maybe I'll finish. John M is asking what are the most critical items to order, and do you see much risk to their delivery times? The most critical items are the respect of the DMS modules themselves. So because our design is based on modular plants, now that design is already complete for that module, and the delivery time is six months for that. The other main item is the crushing modules, and there's two side by side when you're crushing modules that we're looking to purchase out of South Africa as well, and those are also six months delivery.

32:22 The size of our project being a a target of 1,000,000 ton per annum throughput to produce a 125,000 tons per annum of concentrate, this is not a large bespoke design project. We've gone with modular designs so that we can meet a very quick installation time frame. So those are the main items that are long lead, and we've already got quotations for both the crushing modules and the DMS plant modules. So we're here in South Africa meeting with the the tendering companies this week in order to meet our target of placing an order by the end of the month on both of those sets of key long lead items. Bernard?

33:10 I think that's right, Steve, but I would also say a couple of critical items are our staffing. And as we mentioned in one of our announcements, we have our building our team in Mali now. A critical a critical item for us is to make sure we continue to get good people working with us. And, essentially, I think most other things are covered. We we always maintain good government relations. They're critical for an operation. We maintain good community relations. So those items, while they're not something that we can order, but they're something we work on at all times. So I think that's the key critical items that we've identified.

33:58 Just moving through a couple of these questions on noting that time is running. Edward r's asking about a flotation plant, and I think we've answered that, Edward. That is that we'd like to do it as soon as possible, but a lot of work between now and making that decision in terms of drilling metallurgical testing, geotechnical testing, and so on. I'm gonna try and take two or three questions combined here. A viewer three a, a viewer Kyle g, a view of three a again. And, essentially, these questions are asking about share price and and also sorry. Kyle g as well asking about the share price and a couple of things around that. So number one, clearly, don't influence the day to day share price. And while it's a measure, for us, the measure is actually the way we're moving and developing the project.

35:03 So I can't explain to take the movements on the share price. One of the questions was, do I think a £100,000,000 is fair value? We when we've been valuing the project and when we have been discussing with potential investors, we've never really referenced the market capitalization of the company because we have a view on the value of the project. And in in my opinion, Burgooning is worth more than a £100,000,000, and even with our 49, again, I would say it's worth more than that. The company now fully funded, so no need to be looking to banking or additional work to prove up something for a loan.

35:51 We're ready to move ahead. And, again, I would my view is that it's worth significantly more. There was a question, I think it was from Kyle g, asking why did we issue all the shares today? Well, Kyle, that was our agreement for the funding, and that funding is of great benefit to KODAL. The funding transaction is complete. Those funds are now available to be used, so we have to. Very happy to have done it. Very happy to have welcomed Hainan Group to our share register. So I think I think that covers those.

36:43 Paul again asking about license amendments and timeline. Paul, I'm There is no there is no answer that I can give that would be reasonable. We maintain our government communications, and we're working to achieve all our license transfers as quickly as possible. And, Jen, again, sorry for mispronouncing that. Statement more than question here. Been with KODAL for seven years, and well done. Thank you. Thank you for your support, and I hope we continue to deserve that. From a question regarding our former major shareholder and and long term supporter, Rixin International, and the question was what happened to Rixin, and did they not have an offtake agreement?

37:40 Well, I did answer this earlier, Moe. Rishin is still one of our major shareholders. They currently hold 12 o 1% of the company. Their offtake direct opportunity to deal for an offtake with us past. They maintain a right of first refusal up to 80% of the product. Reaching Reaching have been a long term supporter and a long term lithium industry player, really. They they are involved in production of lithium carbonate, lithium hydroxide in China, and have been in the industry from the early days around two thousand thirteen, fourteen. So a very experienced group and has been very helpful to us through the times.

38:35 Three a is asking me about comparison to production concerns comparing us to another company. Three a, I don't I won't answer those. What I would say is that we are doing we have done and continue to do a significant amount of metallurgical testing and design work both well, we've done design we've done testing in China. We've done testing in Australia. We've done some testing in South Africa. We're comfortable with the work we've done and continue to do more. Gary, again, asking about another company nearby to us, Leo, and questioning, is that preventing our license transfer? No. Not at all, Gary.

39:30 Separate company, separate issues, same same goal, and that is to produce lithium spodumene concentrate from Mali. Our issues are the government moratorium on licenses. We expect that to be finalized when the new mining code is fully enacted. Steve, a question for you. Yep. Do the plant manufacturers have the plant you have selected sorry. Do the plant manufacturer have the plant you have selected have a proven plant already out in the market? So I think this is a question from Paul D who's, I think, asking how we buying a plant that we can point to and say this already operates well.

40:22 Yeah. I understand the question. Thanks, Bernard. DRA Global supplied modules to the Alchura mine that are exactly the same size of the ones that we are going to install at Bagoonie. The Atura mine was purchased by Pilbara Minerals in Western Australia. They're listed on the ASX, quite a successful lithium producer in hard rock mining. I believe they've changed the name of the mine now but it used to be called Altura. So proven in lithium. DRA Global also proven in DMS of coal and DMS and dense media separation being DMS in diamonds as well. So very well versed with the process and their modular designs have been used all over Africa. So we're very confident that what we've selected is proven not only in general dense media separation processing, but also directly in lithium.

41:25 Steve, another question you can answer, and this relates to our proposed implementation of the development. And the question from Edward is, are you still planning to stockpile ore? I'm not sure where the question originated from, Bernard. What we will do is we'll always have mining, stockpiling, or ahead of processing so that the process plant doesn't run dry feed. That's pretty standard in our mining plan. We'll also be stockpiling the fines that come out of the dense media separation plant. So those fines will still have grade in them, and they'll be stockpiled for the future flotation plants. So we get a second bite at the fine material that comes out of the the dense media separation plant. For those that know a little bit about DMS, once you get finer material below 0.801 mil, that is screened out before the the DMS process because it won't recover the finer material.

42:35 And that's pretty standard in all dense media. So by having the two stage process, it provides us with a second bite to ensure that the the lithium that's within that final fraction can still be recovered and sent to market in the future. I hope that answers the question, Bernard. Yeah. I'm I'm sure it does, Steve. But, also, I think we might add that we are looking to finalize a mining contractor and bring them in reasonably early into the development so that we can so they can be used for the civil works as well as the commencement of mining ahead of the finalization of the plan. So there may be a stockpile ahead of the completion of the DMS that will allow us to commission and and move that to commercial production.

43:33 Yeah. That's correct, Bernard. And I think it's worth noting to to our listeners that we've done a a first pass of expressions of interest and budget pricing from mining contractors active in the region, including locally owned companies. And we've shortlisted, to three entities now, in discussion with Hainan. And after the update to the pit optimization and mine design, we'll be finalizing those tenders in the next two to three months, and that'll give us that opportunity to get into the mine the actual physical mining well ahead of of program. Yeah. Thanks, Steve.

44:20 A couple of other questions around the around the development that perhaps we can quickly look at. One is and you I'll I'll send you these, and then you can answer. The wet season being an issue for us to achieve our timetable as well as transporting material to site. Do you have any comment around that? No. I've been working in West Africa for twenty five years. The key for us is access to the site. You may have seen on Twitter, we've commenced constructing the main access road, and that'll be all weather access. The the way the schedule is working quite conveniently for us is that we'll be able to commence our earthworks early next year and even have all of our concrete poured before the rainy season. So we'll be out of the ground, and and that's that's the key when it comes to avoiding any delays due to the wet season. But our program, does consider how the wet, you know, the wettest days can impact us. So we think we've done all the planning we need to to to meet this twelve month program, which, we've also always said is fast track, but we're focused.

45:41 And, you know, Hainan are on board with that as well. Okay. Another question that I'll answer you could have pretty straightforward, and that is along the lines, are we going to be shipping are we going to be shipping some direct shipping or DSO on the side? And the simple answer to that is no. We have no intention of DSO operations, and we believe that the best benefit that we bring to Mali and the community we're working is to have concentration processing on-site and delivering a higher value spodumene concentrate. A couple of questions here, which I don't wanna go into too much in regards to Hainan's future intentions.

46:33 Number one, the answer is I don't know. Number two, the answer to Hainan looking to buy us out is that we and Hainan are working together on the project. We're partners. We anticipate working together for a long time. The interest that we've had from Hainan is not to look to take us out of the Koduni, but rather to look to work with us on other projects if something good becomes available. So that's all I'll say about those. A question about KMUK floated on the market from Darren A. At this stage, we have no intention of that. KMUK is fully funded to build an operation to become a significant spodumene producer.

47:27 KODAL, with its 49% interest in KMUK, stands to benefit fantastically from that. So and then I would I would I think it's worthwhile perhaps addressing couple of questions that have come in regarding m and a activity in the lithium sector, and I'm sure as all as we're all investors, we understand that there's a lot of activity going on, and I'm here in Australia at the moment, and, you know, there's been some fantastic news around takeovers and opportunities and companies coming in and paying top dollar for projects. And, obviously, a question relating to Atlantic Lithium and the nonbinding offer that was made today from its major shareholder.

48:24 Does this reflect a phase of consolidation in the African lithium sector or in general in the lithium sector? And look. I think what we're seeing is the fact that while people talk a lot about lithium and talk a lot about spodumene production, the reality is that there are not a lot there are not a lot of projects available that are readily able to move into mining. We're fortunate that we have control of the Burgundy project project, as we've stated lots of times, is ready for production. It is a quality asset. It has attracted a lot of attention. Is there a phase of consolidation?

49:10 Probably. We're seeing it in Australia, that we see groups trying to put together assets to become a bigger body. We're seeing some of the larger historically, large lithium producers looking to gain control of emerging assets. The best thing that we think we can do for our shareholders is to make sure that we do the best job possible at Burgundy. We bring this to production as quickly as possible and highlight the value of that asset. And, you know, it also goes without saying that while we have money in the parent company, we're also looking for opportunities, and we think this is a great time to be a lithium developer, explorer, and and miner. So interesting time for the sector.

50:08 A question about how many drill rigs are coming to Burgundy and when and look. I think I think we're pretty much near the end of our time. So we will I'll answer this one about two weeks, and what we anticipate is a very major program. Firstly, starting at Begoonie, we're looking to have two RC rigs and a diamond rig operating. We expect to be able to drill between now and at least Christmas and back in mid to late January to continue the program. Obviously, we highlight that it's not our only prospect.

50:53 It is a high priority prospect at the moment. The two drill rigs operating there and as as availability allows a rig to move and start testing some of the other prospects. So expecting to have three rigs working for double shift for an extended period of time. And I think possibly a comment to finish off and to tie up a little bit into some of the speculation around the consolidation in the market and what's happening with companies. I have a question here about any thoughts on the price of spodumene. Do I think 2,000 is fair?

51:40 It's been up to 4,000 and down to 400. It's really difficult thing for me to comment on. We obviously have done a lot of our assessments at lower selling prices that we're seeing today. We still have an extremely robust project. Bagoonie is a project that has always appeared to us to be very suitable for development, And, obviously, we'd love to be achieving maximum price. We saw the price touch 6,000 briefly, and that's a real nice marker for me because when we first got into lithium back in 2016, the price was below $600 a ton. So in those six and seven years, we saw a tenfold increase in the price. Yes. It's come back, but the demand is still strong and the demand has been exponentially growing. And so while there's been an increase in production into the market, that has all been taken up, and we're still seeing a supply gap that we intend to move into, and we expect to be achieving a very good price for our product.

52:56 What do I think is fair? I think the maximum price we can achieve is fair. And what we intend to do and to the best of our ability is to produce as much as possible of the good quality spodumene concentrate that will achieve the best price in the market, and that is gonna underpin the future of Burgoonie and look to look to us being able to develop and operate a long term nightmare. So I think I think given the time, that will be the last question. So Yeah. Bernard, Steve, thank you very much for that and being very generous with your time there. I think you've addressed those questions you can from investors. And, course, the company will review all the questions submitted today and publish those responses on the investor meet company platform. But just before redirecting investors to provide you with their feedback, which is particularly important to the company, Bernard, could I just ask you for a few closing comments?

53:56 Yep. I'd like to thank everyone who listened today. Just thank all our long term supporters, and also all new supporters who've come into our into our company and are looking forward to a strong future. Bagoonie is a project we've been focused on since 2016. The announcement today and this few announcements this week about resource increase and funding major milestones for us. They start us on the next path to development, to operation, and expansion of the project, and we think it's a very exciting time. A lot of activity will be going on on-site and off-site, and we anticipate having a strong news flow to present to our shareholders as well as we welcome our partners in the Hainan Group who have been working with us for a long period now, and we're looking forward to a very successful collaboration with them.

55:00 So thank you everyone for your time, and thanks, Alessandro, for the opportunity today. No problem at all, Burn and Steve. Thank you once again for updating investors today. Could I please ask investors not to close the session as you now be automatically redirected to provide your feedback in order that the management team can better understand your views and expectations? It's only take a few moments to complete, but I'm sure it'll be greatly valued by the company. On behalf of the management team of KODAL MINERALS PLC, we'd like to thank you for attending today's presentation, and good morning to you all.