Company: FEAV
Filing Date: 2025-02-03
Form Type: DEF 14A
Source: 0000950170-25-012391
Chunk: 100

Company: 5E Advanced Materials, Inc.
Filing Date: 2025-02-03
Form: DEF 14A
Chunk 100
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over 50,000 gallons of PLS were accumulated and we achieved an average head grade of 5.5% and the Small-Scale Facility (“SSF”) commenced production in April 2024 after final electrical work and commissioning was completed in March 2024.

With the first production batch of boric acid from the SSF complete, we continued to refine operating processes such as filtering, drying and bagging parameters for boric acid. During July 2024, we shipped samples of boric acid to multiple potential customers for them to begin customer qualification against their customer established qualification criteria. To meet specification, boric acid requires little to no moisture or impurities, as well as a specific particle size. With delivery of samples to certain customers complete, we continue to refine the production process to meet customer specification for larger amounts of product. Customers currently in the qualification program include leading global materials science, consumer electronics, fiber optics, defense and specialty pharmaceutical glass companies which have a growing need to procure boric acid supply for their applications. This key advancement is expected to facilitate further commercial discussion and form the foundation for off-take and supply agreements. Upon successful feedback from customers that the product meets their specifications, we then plan to deliver larger volumes of boric acid from the SSF, to the customer production facilities for product validation in a live manufacturing environment. We are currently targeting delivering up to 100 tons of boric acid to potential customers for testing during the fall of 2024.

The SSF is designed to initially produce up to 2,000 short tons of boric acid annually and targets initial production of lithium carbonate, with optionality built in to scale up to a run rate of 9,000 short tons and commensurate increased lithium production with an incremental capital investment. Our operations team is currently working towards our next production target of three short tons of boric acid per day while we optimize product quality and production rates.

The initial high-quality run-of-mine head grade of boric acid provides validation of our initial operational assumptions which we hope will facilitate discussions with stakeholders around funding options for Phase 1 of the proposed commercial facility and securing commercial contracts for our future products.

Commercial Facility and Wellfield Design Optimization

Our current technical report summary calls for a mine plan with 841 vertical wells. Initial recovery data and mine planning indicates that utilizing horizontal wells can increase solution flow rates, resource contact, and reduce the quantity of wells by a factor of up to ten, which could meaning