It’s official: Reward Minerals (ASX:RWD) is buying the Beyondie Sulphate of Potash Project after Kalium Lakes went bust

Reward Minerals (ASX:RWD) is buying the Beyondie Sulphate of Potash Project From the Kalium Lakes (ASX:KLL) administrators. Only a few weeks after putting its hand up, a binding deal has been signed, and one of Australia’s best potash projects has a new lease of life.

The Beyondie Sulphate of Potash (SOP) Project lies in Western Australia, 160km South-East of Newman. The aim was for at least 100ktpa of potash and for an initial mine life of 30-50 years. And it would’ve helped Australia’s agricultural industry, with it reliant on imports for fertilisers such as potash. Sounds great, right?

Where KLL messed up with Beyondie

The trouble was that Beyondie (among other potash projects) was that it was capital intensive (even with fertiliser prices being as high as they were). It was estimated that KLL had drawn down over $200m in debt finance, but still had gotten nowhere near what it had intended to get to so far as production is concerned. Also complicating matters was that the company failed to perfect the technical aspects of extracting groundwater from beneath salt lakes, and then using evaporation and processing to produce a saleable potassium sale for use as a crop nutrient.

Reward giving it a new lease of life

After Kalium collapsed in August, administrators had looked for a buyer. Last month, Reward Minerals entered into an exclusivity deed to obtain the project, and has announced a binding deal today. All up, it will pay $20m, including $250k it has already paid and $5m that will be deferred and only required to be repaid by June 2025.

Obviously, Reward would not be spending this money to acquire Beyondie if it didn’t think it could make it back on the project. However, it is clear that this company has its work ahead of it.

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