50%. Same as Deutsche Bank in their report.
Even that may be optimistic.
Problem is that a spodumene plant is basically tuned to the ore body.
It is set up to deal with a specific profile of impurities and that governs decisions over whether to install flotation, mica circuits etc.
Only one flow chart suits spodumene processing.
The Chinese do have local lepidolite plants but actual output is very low.
I haven't got the figures at hand at the moment - but its a tiny fraction of global lithium production.
That's because lepidolite is a very low grade way of producing lithium. It runs at between 12 and 16 tons of ore to a ton of lithium. The whole appetite for Australian hard rock is because they struggle to produce much from this method.
I believe the appearance of Greenbushes' supply basically made them redundant.
I don't have any figures on how many plants of this kind are still left in production.
They may like to get their hands on Australian raw ore, but it doesn't mean that their plants will be that efficient or that they won't need to build new ones to handle the kind of scale that is being discussed.
GXY Price at posting:
$1.76 Sentiment: Buy Disclosure: Held
