JOHANNESBURG (miningweekly.com) – Australia-listed Novo Litio has been engaging with Lusorecursos in Portugal to resolve the dispute concerning the ownership of the Sepeda lithium project commercially.
This comes as a court last year denied Novo Litio’s request for expedited legal proceedings to hear the matter.
Novo Litio said this week that it has been making a “concerted effort to engage with Lusorecursos on a without prejudice basis to resolve the matter outside the legal process”, noting that a protracted case would be damaging to both parties and all stakeholders.
Novo Litio believes it has a binding agreement to acquire 100% of the granted licence and licence applications held by Lusorecursos ARG and Lusorecursos LDA.
Given that the Sepeda project licences are registered in the name of Lusorecursos, the Portuguese General Directorate of Energy and Geology cannot legally recognise Novo Litio’s application for a mining licence.
The company last year released a scoping study for Sepeda, which showed that a larger global resource would be required to justify the construction of a battery-grade lithium carbonate plant in Portugal.
Novo Litio also owns the Spodumenberget lithium project, in Sweden, but said on Thursday that it would continue with further desktop technical review before committing to a maiden drilling programme. Drilling was initially planned for the first quarter of 2018.
This is in line with the company’s commitment to reduce overhead costs and financial commitments while seeking to resolve the Sepeda ownership dispute. It has already reduced its costs by A$16-million.