Canadian lithium junior Nemaska Lithium on Friday announced that activities at the Whabouchi project would be shut down “shortly”, while efforts to complete an “optimised project financing structure” continued.
The announcement put further pressure on the stock of the company, which is trying to complete a $600-million investment deal with the Pallinghurst Group before the end of the year.
Nemaska’s share price fell to a new 52-week low of C$0.16 a share on Friday, well below the C$0.80 a share the stock fetched a year earlier.
President and CEO Guy Bourassa said in a news release that Nemaska continued to work with Pallinghurst and other strategic partners to complete a project financing structure and that it intended to submit this to shareholders for approval “as soon as possible”.
A shareholders annual general meeting could potentially be combined with a special meeting regarding Pallinghurst’s potential investment in 2020.
“Over the past month, our teams have worked diligently to prepare the sites for temporary shutdown, in anticipation of an orderly resumption of activities that will minimise delays once financing has been secured and the construction schedule is confirmed,” said Bourassa.
The company announced in October that the project would be shut down and said, at the time, that it was letting go 64 employees.
As at September 30, cumulative incurred capital investment totalled C$392-million on a total Whabouchi project budget of C$1.269-billion, including contingency.