Lithium Bank sells Estevan area land to unnamed buyer
By Brian Zinchuk
LithiumBank announced on April 1 that it sold its lands in the Estevan area for $15 million, minus the $8 million paid when the company put down a non-refundable deposit when it entered an option agreement late last year.
Back on Dec. 20, the company said it had entered into an option agreement which provided another company the option to one or more of the company’s three lithium brine projects located in Saskatchewan: Estevan, South and/or Kindersley.
LithiumBank’s Saskatchewan properties, as outlined in its March corporate presentation.
The unnamed buyer is a subsidiary of a public company that is arm’s length to the company, according to LithiumBank. Essentially, they put money down to have their pick of the three areas LithiumBank had been assembling in Saskatchewan. They picked the area north of Estevan, paying out the balance of the option.
“The exercise of the Estevan land purchase option for a total of CAD $15 million in non-dilutive capital by the optionee is a testament to LithiumBank’s value creation model,” Paul Matysek, Executive Chairman of LithiumBank, said in a release “We have sought to acquire district-scale landholdings with prospective lithium brine geology, efficiently de-risk the assets, and structure mutually beneficial transactions with major project developers. This transaction is evidence of the merits of our model and our ability to build shareholder value. We will continue to advance the remainder of our portfolio in Alberta (Boardwalk and Park Place) and Saskatchewan (South and Kindersley) through advanced engineering, with large scale DLE pilot testing of our Alberta brines expected to commence in the next quarter at our Calgary facility.”
According to the map in the LithiumBank March presentation, those properties are between Estevan and Stoughton, straddling Highway 47 but extending eastward past Lampman towards Highway 9.
LithiumBank said it retains the Kindersley and South lithium brine projects as the option agreement’s exercise period has concluded. The “South” project area is in close proximity to Arizona Lithium’s land base near Torquay. The Kindersley area is adjacent to Denison Mine’s lands, recently purchased from Grounded Lithium in late January.
The company’s principal focus has been its Boardwalk project, centred around Valleyview, Alta, and Park Place project, between and Edson Fox Cree, Alta. It had not done any drilling in Saskatchewan to date. It has set up a pilot plant in Alberta to do testing there.
In connection with the exercise of the option, LithiumBank has agreed to pay a $112,000.00 cash finder’s fee to Kepis & Pobe Financial Group Inc., being 1.6 per cent of the purchase price, less the deposit.
As of the time of writing, none of the other prominent lithium players with land in Saskatchewan had issued a press release on the same day indicating they were the buyer.