Michael Dehn is not the typical Bay Street junior mining CEO - he closes multi-million dollar financings and major strategic deals from his alpaca farm in southwestern Ontario.
Proactive caught up with Dehn at PDAC 2022 over drinks in a bustling hotel lobby just outside the conference to talk about his passions of farming and lithium mining. It’s clear from speaking with him that alpacas, goats and geology share an equal place in his heart. So it’s no surprise to hear that Dehn likes to have a hand in multiple projects at once.
United Lithium (CSE:ULTH) Corp, one of the junior mining companies that Dehn helms, is a hard rock lithium explorer with projects in Canada, the US, Sweden and Finland. If that’s not enough, the company is working on processing technology, making concentrate, lithium carbonate and – soon – lithium hydroxide.
The group acquired the Bergby project in Sweden last year and just started drilling on the property, with positive results so far.
READ: United Lithium is an exploration & development company energized by the global demand for lithium
Bergby is a large property at 10,828 hectares, nestled in central Sweden near Northvolt’s lithium battery gigafactory. United Lithium (CSE:ULTH) is hoping to put out a resource estimate on the project as quickly as possible, with two drills turning and talks of bringing in a third.
“We have such a large land position,” Dehn told Proactive. “The only part of the mining cycle that we can compress is the exploration stage. The best way to do that is throw more drills at the project.”
Moving next door, United’s Kietyönmäki project in Finland is a high-grade, 1.5% lithium oxide project with multiple dykes of up to 40 metres of 1.1% lithium. “Good hard rock, near-surface, an hour from Helsinki, right off of a major road – it’s very similar geologically to most of the hard rock projects in Quebec.”
The company is putting a team together for a drill program to commence as soon as possible.
New lithium project in US
Earlier this year, it added to its portfolio by staking a large land position in the historic lithium-beryllium producing area of the Black Hills of South Dakota. The area has a rich history: decades ago, there were nearly 40 small-scale lithium mines in operation that, in today’s dollars, would account for nearly $500 million in lithium production.
Within United’s claim area, there are over 20 past-producing mines producing multiple commodities including mica, lithium, beryllium, quartz and feldspar. On the fringes are some patented lode claims where there was additional lithium production.
Essentially, United has staked all of the open pegmatite in the area near historic production that doesn’t interfere with tourism, historically significant or culturally significant areas. “We’re not going into virgin territory, we’re in historically mined areas. It’s maybe 100 feet deep, if we’re lucky, but even more likely, 20 or 30 feet. We purposely stayed away from the Keystone area near Mount Rushmore even though it was a substantial spodumene producing area, and we stayed away from Crazy Horse – we understand their importance to the local economy and want to work with our neighbours, not have them upset with us.”
READ: United Lithium stakes large land position in past-producing lithium region of South Dakota
As Dehn puts it, since there are already past-producing mines on-site, the challenge is moving from the known to the unknown. The strategy is to use the geochemistry from an earlier sampling program, combine it with old occurrences and work outwards. The hope is that by the fall of 2022, United will have enough information to set up a drill program and get permits in order to drill before the end of the year.
Currently, in the US, North Carolina is the focus for hard rock lithium mining thanks to Piedmont Lithium’s Piedmont project. That hasn’t stopped companies in United’s peer group from looking at more unusual deposits – salars, brines, clays – that lack commercial technology to produce. That’s not a problem with hard rock lithium.
“We have the technology to produce, it’s been around for over a hundred years,” Dehn said. “We were looking for areas with high grade lithium, historic production, derisking the technology and going into safe mining jurisdictions. We’re really looking at derisking the project, the political risk and trying to be first on the ground. Actually I’m quite shocked that we were able to be the first on the ground.”
Value add technology
Most junior companies would be comfortable with four exploration properties under its belt. But United Lithium is different.
The group is testing lithium processing technology to drive more environmentally-friendly product with higher recoveries. So far, testing has produced a higher-grade spodumene concentrate, with better recoveries of lithium in production of lithium carbonate than typical processes and at lower temperatures and reagent quantities. United Lithium is hoping to produce lithium hydroxide at bench scale.
Dehn said that the group is moving forward on multiple exploration and technology fronts simultaneously, “keenly aware” of the supply-demand imbalance in the lithium market.
“We are looking where possible to reduce timelines and move each of our projects toward completion of all-important feasibility studies, so we can economically and sustainably realize the value of our projects and technologies,” the CEO said.
The company is also looking at producing value-added consumer and industrial products from the feldspar, quartz and mica by-products that may be recovered in the mining of lithium pegmatites.
Dehn has a message for investors counting on every new technology in the lithium industry working.
“You may be surprised at how long it takes to get a new technology commercialized, and there’s a risk to that. When you see what the supply and demand variation is, a lot of that future forecasting counts on some of these projects that have NI 43-101 resources coming into production, even though the financed don’t yet have a proven technology that works. They aren’t even commercial in some cases. When you see lithium prices today, I don’t think we’re at the peak – I think we’re going to continue to see price increases and see a bigger deficit than the market forecasts right now.”
He has a point. Take Europe, for example: there are about 40 gigafactories and only one mine going into production on the continent.
“One domestic mine to supply 40 plants doesn’t work,” Dehn noted. “Tesla alone needs 165% of current lithium production globally in order to hit its target of 20 million electric cars per year. What happens when you add Volvo, Volkswagen, Mercedes, Ford? There’s just not enough lithium for the EV space.”
Once the lithium discussion was done, Dehn had to take a quick phone call. One of the alpacas on his farm was about to give birth.
Contact Angela at angela@proactiveinvestors.com
Follow her on Twitter @AHarmantas