Mining
Wealth Minerals: harnessing the power of lithium to drive value
By Galit Solomon and Annemarie Brissenden for The Richmond Report
March 24, 2020
4 min. read
Here's what you need to know
- Wealth Minerals has a low market cap relative to its lithium peers – this means it has significant room to grow.
- Location, location, location! – Wealth Minerals has a large, highly prospective property package in a mining-friendly jurisdiction with a supportive government.
- The timing is right – global demand for lithium is growing exponentially, while Wealth Minerals is busy developing new supply.
If location is everything, Wealth Minerals Inc. (Wealth) has potentially struck gold. Or in this case, lithium. The Vancouver-based company is focused on developing its 46,000-hectare flagship property in Chile’s Atacama Salar.
“The region accounts for about one third of global lithium supply,” explains Tim McCutcheon, Wealth Minerals’ Chief Executive Officer. “Based on the success of third-party facilities south of our site, the Atacama Salar is the second largest producer of lithium carbonate. Plus, it’s the lowest cost source of lithium in the world today.”
“The world is on the cusp of an electric vehicle revolution and Wealth Minerals has been preparing for it over the past 24 months.”
Greg Beckett, Senior Analyst and Chartered Investment Manager for the Richmond Club
We are empowering the green energy storage and electric vehicle markets
Lithium is a key element used to produce batteries and other types of energy storage, making it especially important as the world transitions to a low carbon economy and changes how it consumes energy. However, there’s one problem, says McCutcheon. “The medium-to-short-term global demand for lithium is outpacing supply. That’s where Wealth Minerals comes in. We are empowering the green energy storage and electric vehicle markets by developing our world class lithium assets in Chile.”
Strong partnerships with government and an industry leader
Wealth Minerals is also committed to being a green producer, and has partnered with major players in the space to achieve its goals. “Uranium One, a subsidiary of Rosatom, has partnered with us to use their environmentally-friendly sorption technology that recycles brine water from the Salar to extract up to 90% lithium.”
The other partner is Enami, Chile’s state mining company. “The government has a strong interest in further developing the Atacama Salar, knowing the value of the natural resource within it. They view the lithium that can be mined from the region as a great potential source of revenue for the country, the second after copper.”
“The partnership with Uranium One means that we have the financial aspect of developing our property more or less taken care of, while the partnership with Enami puts us in direct contact with the government in the region.”
“The world is on the cusp of an electric vehicle revolution and Wealth Minerals has been preparing for it over the past 24 months,” says Greg Beckett, Senior Analyst and Chartered Investment Manager for the Richmond Club. Beckett has added Wealth Minerals to the Richmond Club Index, which has averaged a return of 20.4% per year over the last 15 years.
He believes commuting is undergoing a significant change, and lithium is a key driver of that change. “Wealth Minerals has positioned itself for future success by exploring in a region that boasts many excellent lithium assets,” adds Beckett.
He says now is the time to get in on this stock, because:
- Wealth Minerals has a low market cap relative to its lithium peers – this means it has significant room to grow.
- Location, location, location! – Wealth Minerals has a large, highly prospective property package in a mining-friendly jurisdiction with a supportive government.
- The timing is right – global demand for lithium is growing exponentially, while Wealth Minerals is busy developing new supply.