Lithium Demand surge, page-967

@Cashmeoutside is right. They don't need 5Mtpa to feed the refinery. The mistake you made is assuming that LiOH is assuming 100% weight which it is not. The stoichiometric ratio is about 5.93 tonnes of 6% SC for 1 tonne of hydroxide. So allowing for conversion loss that comes out to be something like 7 tonnes. Therefore 44kt of hydroxide would require about 310kt of spod which will be bang on for KDR grade and recoveries.

Now if they build a 5 Mtpa spod plant then that obviously changes the economics of the project. It also comes with another couple 100m of capex bills that will require funding.

But anyway. Look at it this way.

For KDR say all spod goes into refinery. COP for spod is $250/t and hydroxide conversion is $2,000/t. Total costs are $165.5m and total sales (Hydroxide ex China is selling for say $16k/t) are $704m. Revenue of $538.5m

Now PLS at 5Mtpa will be producing around 830kt of spod. 63klt of these will go to themselves for Hydroxide via POSCO refinery (9kt x 7)

So we have 767kt sold at $700 margins ($950/t - $250/t (same as KDR)) = $536.9m

Refined tonnes = 9kt x $16,000 - (63kt x $250 + 9kt x $2,000) = $110.25m

So I get PLS as over $100m better off. Obviously still some variables in there but I don't think I have been too controversial.

If you apply a 10x multiple to NPAT that becomes about $1bn extra value (after conversion to AUD and then tax $100m EBITDA in USD basically ends up NPAT of A$100m)