Ever since the lithium stock of Pilbara Minerals started to take off last year, there has been constant talk about if and when it will make a tilt at neighbour Altura Mining.
But the message from Pilbara chairman Tony Leibowitz at the company’s general meeting on Tuesday was clear: don’t hold your breath.
Altura owns the southern extension of Pilbara’s Pilgangoora deposit. Rather than duplicate infrastructure across two separate mines, there’d be plenty of logic to incorporate it into a single development.
For Mr Leibowitz, however, the logic just isn’t sufficiently compelling. Pilgangoora, which Pilbara describes as the second-largest spodumene deposit in the world, is more than big enough to meet Pilbara’s needs well into the future.
Asked by a shareholder at the meeting if Pilbara would be interested in buying Altura or any of the other parties that had flocked to the area and picked up ground around Pilgangoora, Mr Leibowitz said he was getting questions from those groups asking whether Pilbara would be interested in taking them over.
“There’s no need for us to do that; we’ve got enough on our plate,” he said. “We’re not even considering that.” |
