Share
9,111 Posts.
lightbulb Created with Sketch. 908
clock Created with Sketch. 19/04/18
00:23
Share
Originally posted by Scarpa
↑
This doesn't surprise me, because the growth will come from hard rock plays. What people don't understand by and large is that for brine projects there are 10 to 15 units of potassium to each unit of lithium therefore project economics is actually driven more so there by what is happening in the potash market as against the lithium market. Be mindful that most brine projects have a LI20 content of much less than 0.5% so a lot of evaporation required to get you to a required grade and that takes time too. Take SQM, if you look at their annual reports you'll see that potash/agricultural sales account for more than 1/2 of its revenue and in fact lithium sales are less than 30% of its revenue. You can't just ramp up lithium production from brine operations because you can then tank your potash prices.
Expand
Brine is slow to come on stream for sure but the potash is not the major factor behind this. SQM group all their Ag products together, it’s not just potash from brine.
