Financial Post Interview: Stria Lithium

We spoke to Stria Lithium Inc. (TSXV:SRA) President and COO Iain Todd about the new worlds of lithium metal. From Stria’s website we learn “Stria has developed a novel process to produce lithium metal from spodumene. This process will consume spodumene from our Pontax deposit to generate lithium chloride which will be converted directly into lithium metal. Chlorine is liberated and recycled to the process.”
At the moment there are three main markets for lithium metal. “The first is the primary, non-rechargeable, battery market. Things like hearing aid batteries. These use lithium metal foil which we have the capacity to make. It is a huge value add with a ton of lithium metal foil selling for around $250,000.” said Todd.
“The second market for lithium metal is the aluminum alloy business. Lithium makes aluminum lighter and stronger. So it is attractive in applications where weight is a factor. For example, there are 400 kilograms of lithium in every Airbus.” said Todd, “And the third significant market for lithium metal is in pharmaceutical applications where it is used as a starting material for various drugs.”
“These are mature, well understood markets which are growing 5 or 6 percent per year. Global production of lithium metal is around 4000 tons per year.” said Todd.
On September 1, 2015, Pierre Arcand, the Québec Minister for Minister of Natural Resources and Minister Responsible for Plan Nord announced the award of $114,400 in grants from the Government of Québec, Plan Nord, and from Innovation et Développement Manicouagan (CLD) Baie Comeau, to Stria to conduct a prefeasibility analysis for the production of lithium metal and lithium foil in Baie Comeau, Québec.
The purpose of the prefeasibility study is to determine the viability of Stria’s planned production facility before moving to a full feasibility analysis prior to construction. Stria anticipates completion of the initial analysis within 3 months
“Strategically, we want to start selling our lithium metal into the mature primary battery, alloy and pharmaceutical markets. However we also want to be able to bring our unique lithium metal process and our capacity to work with that metal into the high growth, next generation, Li-ion battery market.” said Todd. “We need to be ready to meet quickly growing demand with a proven, tested, lithium metal foil product. So we need to start right now.”
Stria Lithium is currently in the process of raising $1,000,000 through a private placement offering to develop a pilot production plant to obtain the engineering data prior to full-scale production.
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