Aspiring potash miner Kalium Lakes (ASX:KLL) has signed a crucial offtake agreement with German fertiliser behemoth K+S.

Buyers will often sign offtake agreements with miners for large chunks of future production. Offtakes are also super important to aspiring producers, who are more likely to obtain project financing if buyers can be locked in before the mine is even built.

  • Scroll down for the ASX’s other offtake news today>>>

And all the pieces are coming together for Kalium. The company is close to locking in a $120m loan to fund its Beyondie sulphate of potash (SOP) project, which is additional to a $74m pledge from the Northern Australian Infrastructure Fund (NAIF).

The K+S deal will see Kalium supply 90,000tpa of SOP products – or 100 per cent of production – for an initial 10 years.

Kalium wants to finalise government approvals, project financing, and make a final investment decision in the second quarter of this year.

The stock — which is up 24.5 per cent over the past year — increased slightly to 50.5c in morning trade.

The Kalium share price over the past year. (Pic: Nabtrade)

 

In other offtake news today:

    • Mexico based zinc-lead miner Consolidated Zinc (ASX:CZL) is voluntarily suspended pending updates on an ore toll treatment and offtake agreement. The news could be good or bad ; we won’t know until the announcement is made on or before April 2. In January, the company – which owns the Plomosas zinc mine – said it had “an established relationship” and treatment/offtake contracts with Mexico’s largest miner, Grupo Mexico.

 

  • Very rare mineral producer Pioneer (ASX:PIO) says it has mined 57 per cent more pollucite than originally thought – which means more money from its offtake partner, CabotSF. For the year ending June 30, Pioneer expects to record sales of $US7.5m ($10.5m), which is more than enough to fully repay a CabotSF Loan. Between July 2019 and January 2020, the Western Australian miner expects to sell a further $9.85m of pollucite which is “100 per cent settled in cash”. And Pioneer says CabotSF’s new Chinese owner is showing particular interest in the miner’s planned activities and “the prospect of finding more pollucite and lithium minerals”.

READ: Pioneer is now mining Australia’s first deposit of a rare resource used by phones, GPS and the internet