In acquiring the Yendon High Purity Alumina Project (“Yendon” or “the Project”), Hill End Gold (“Hill End” or “the Company”) has seen the opportunity in the forecast growth of the high purity alumina (“HPA”) market. Although being around for some time, the market for HPA is forecast to grow by a CAGR of between 15% and 20% over coming years, largely on the back of expected demand from LED lighting and separator sheets in Li-ion batteries.
Historically, HPA has been produced from the dissolution of metallic aluminium, an expensive process that we estimate costs in the order of US$17,000/tonne of HPA produced. Recent years have seen companies investigating producing HPA directly from high purity kaolin through HCl leaching and purification, with ASX listed Altech Chemicals Limited (ASX: ATC, “Altech”, market capitalisation of A$72 million) now commencing construction on a plant in Malaysia that will use kaolin from Meckering in Western Australia. This is a potentially disruptive technology, with significantly lower costs of production than the traditional method.
