Century Lithium Corp. (TSX-V:LCE, OTCQX:CYDVF) CEO Bill Willoughby spoke with Proactive about the company’s recent progress at its Angel Island project in Nevada.
Willoughby explained that Century Lithium completed a financing in the summer, providing sufficient funds to update its feasibility study and advance into the permitting stage.
He highlighted the company’s inclusion as a FAST-41 transparency project, saying, “It also will help us, moving forward in, the permitting and review process and hopefully accelerate it.”
This federal program posts project timelines and environmental steps publicly, improving communication with both regulators and the public.
Willoughby outlined that the critical milestone ahead is submission of a plan of operations, which will then enter the NEPA process.
This will involve either an environmental impact statement (EIS) or environmental assessment (EA), depending on federal review. He added that around 20 supporting studies have already been completed, with the last currently under review by the Bureau of Land Management.
Looking further ahead, Willoughby noted that Century Lithium has worked with First Phosphate to test lithium iron phosphate material in batteries, confirming the company’s ability to produce high-quality, battery-grade material.
He added that 2026 is shaping up to be a significant year for the company.
Proactive: Alright welcome back inside our Proactive newsroom and joining me now is Bill Willoughby. He is the CEO of Century Lithium. A couple of things I want to talk to you about, about Angel Island, of course, which we’ve talked extensively about over the last little while. The work keeps happening, things keep progressing forward. And that’s what today’s announcements are about. First off, FAST-41. Tell me a bit about the status and what it means and what exactly it is.
Bill Willoughby: Well, FAST-41 is a federal program. It was under the 2016 Infrastructure Act. And it’s now evolved into supporting mining companies through the permitting process. So as a FAST-41 transparency project, which we were selected for, our project timeline is posted, environmental steps are posted on the FAST-41 dashboard that allows the public to look at our project, look at the documents that are related to it, and it just helps us communicate with the government and the public on that basis.
It also will help us moving forward in the permitting and review process and hopefully accelerate it.
And just so people understand, there is a number of permits that you have to get in order to do what you want to do. And this fast tracking allows that process to be a little smoother because it can get sort of down in the weeds, so to speak, when you start putting all these things through.
Right. And the main one that we’re working with, that’s the critical one on our critical path, is the record of decision from the federal government and getting to that point. There’s a number of other permits related to the state, for example, air quality and water quality, water pollution control permit. But the key one for us right now that we’re focused on is getting to the point where we submit a plan of operations and then entering the NEPA process, whether that’s going to be an environmental impact statement (EIS) or an environmental assessment (EA). That will be determined by federal review.
But we’re working to that point. We’re updating a feasibility study that we completed last year to bring all the design parameters into line, and that’s going to support the plan of operations submittal.
So yeah, that NEPA one, a lot of that is there’s a lot of things within that legislation that you have to follow along, but not to say related all to your project. These are specific things that you have to get done in order to move past that process.
Right. Well, yeah, they are related to the project in the fact that there are social and economic impacts. There are general impacts around the area that we have to be reporting on. And that forms all the basis of the studies that we completed. We completed about 20 studies that form the review package, the last one under review now with the Bureau of Land Management. So we’re in a position now to move forward. We completed a raise during the summer that gave us sufficient funding to do the updated feasibility study and then move us onward into the plan of operations, and probably through the permitting process. So we’re quite well positioned now at the forefront of lithium companies in Nevada.
Lastly, 2025 obviously you’ve been pretty busy with all the work that you’ve been doing, but it sounds like 2026, in the beginning of it, is going to be very significant for the future of the company.
Exactly. And we’ve been doing a lot of things on the general site prep, downstream battery interface. During the summer we worked with a company, as we told you before, which was First Phosphate, making lithium iron phosphate material, which they put successfully into batteries. So we know that our material that comes out of our project will be decent quality, battery grade. So that’s all good. Just a lot of things in different areas that we’re concentrating on and we’re looking forward to.