At the meeting, Western’s shareholders set the number of directors of the company at six; elected Wenye (Bill) Xue, Weimin Wang, Guy Bentinck, George Gao, Andrew Hancharyk and Yujia Ren to the Board of Directors; re-appointed KPMG LLP as auditor of the company at a remuneration to be fixed by the directors; and re-approved the company’s rolling Incentive Stock Option Plan.
Western’s Chairman Bill Xue said: “We want to thank all the contractors and suppliers for their continued support and understanding during this unique and challenging period to bring the Milestone Project to fruition. Our special thanks goes to Archer Daniels Midland Company (ADM) for the 18 month extension to the binding offtake agreement commencement date of product delivery starting no later than 30 November 2022. Our primary focus continues to be raising the financing required to complete the remaining 15% of the project. We are pleased with the continued progress during the past ten months, where the project team overcame many challenges to successfully achieve its staged goals in mining performance. The mining parameters, cavern volumes and dissolution efficiency are trending toward the operational targets which is key to securing financing. As the ongoing pandemic and overall market environment continues to affect financing, shareholders are reminded that there can be no certainty the company will predict a confirmed timeline for financing, although the company has mobilised all resources to that end.”