After six months of negotiations, offers and offer improvements, the Techint group was finally able to close the purchase of share control of the firm Alpha Lithium Corporation which will allow you to fully enter the lithium business, one of the star sectors of the moment.
On Friday, the last extension that the company had given to obtain the approval of more than 50% of Alpha shareholders for its latest proposal expired.
The Canadian company owns two lithium projects in the preliminary stage in Argentina: a small one (5,000 hectares) in Salar del Hombre Muerto, in Catamarca, and another with a larger area (27,000 hectares) in el Tolillar (Salta).
To these projects, Techint will add its own mining concessions in Salinas Grandes (Jujuy), that are in a previous stage of development. However, has already built a pilot plant lithium processing.
The group led by Paolo Rocca had first offered 1.28 Canadian dollars per share, but had to raise the proposal to 1.48. Obtained the guarantee of 54% of the shares (102,692,615), what the operation will take about 152 million Canadian dollars or US$ 110.78 million.
It will pay them within a maximum period of three days and will give the rest of the shareholders until October 31 to sell their papers. To complete all the actions, will have to pay about US$205 million.
Techint, a group that has global revenues of US$33 billion and employs 79,000 people, carried out the operation through a network of companies. The firm that closed the operation is TechEnergy Lithium Canada, controlled by Tecpetrol Investments.
At the time of presenting the first offer in May, which was rejected, Techint sought to show itself as a Canadian investor (it highlighted that it has been operating in that country for 20 years with Tenaris) and stated that its intention was to develop lithium assets as part of a integrated battery supply chain in the West (as opposed to China) and that the supply was in line with Canada’s strategy to increase the supply of critical minerals.