PERTH (miningweekly.com) – The share price of ASX-listed Potash West fell slightly on Friday as the company raised the possibility of listing a venture that will pursue potash technologies.
Potash West has obtained a 25% interest in a lithium technology licensing company, which holds the licence for a unique lithium carbonate producing technology.
The interest in the technology company arose from Potash West’s working relationship with its technology partner Strategic Metallurgy (SM), in the development of a new process technology to unlock value from micaceous minerals.
While Potash West is the owner of the K-Max process, in which potash and other commodities are produced from glauconite, SM developed improvements to the K-Max technology that allowed it to treat lithium rich micas, and introduced a purification and recovery process to produce battery grade lithium carbonate.
This new technology was subsequently licensed to fellow-listed Cobre Montana, for a 25-year period, allowing that company the opportunity to apply the technology.
Cobre subsequently made arrangements to employ the technology in the Pilbara and Czech Republic.
SM has agreed to vest a 25% interest of the lithium technology to Potash West.
Potash West said that there was a strong advantage in separating the ownership of the technology from the ownership of the company’s resources, and that an investigation was under way to determine the best way to do so.
Opportunities being investigated include jointly pooling SM and Potash West technologies into a separately listed company that would focus on developing process technologies and licensing them to project developers.
In return for contributing the K-Max process, Potash West would receive a licence to apply the process in all of Western Australia, at a discounted royalty, and a significant shareholding in the newly formed company, which would be distributed to shareholders.
“This is an exciting opportunity for Potash West shareholders. The interest that has been seen in the progress of Cobre Montana is a strong endorsement of the lithium extraction process developed by SM,” said Potash West MD Patric McManus.
“Combining our technologies will allow our existing shareholders to benefit from separate shareholdings in a fertiliser development company and a technology licensing company.”
Potash West shares were trading at a low of 4.2c a share on Friday, down from a high of 4.6c a share.