Running discussion on SP, page-42735

Possibly shouldn't conflate mining strip ratios and ore quality/impurities in such a simplistic way as in that stetement.

A mine can have a strip ratio (waste/ore) of 1:1 or 100:1 and that only affects the economics of the mining extraction part of the project. Once a block is designated as ore, it does not care how many tonnes of waste was moved to get to it, its still the same block of ore, with its own inherent properties and costs of mining it.

Impurities are important for downstream processing, once the ore is crushed it forms part of the ore stream, AVZ's ore has low levels of the undesirable impurities, but no matter how pure the ore is, the costs of benefication/concentration and transportation to market still have to be considered and overcome before the operation is profitable. Having the best orebody in the world will not overcome the fact that proposed mining projects need to be permitted, tenure secured, financed, taxation treatment settled, constructed, staffed and have the infrastructure to support their operation. Until all those things are in place the value of any orebody trades at an execution risk discount compared to another orebody that is already in production.

Lithium is still a commodity like any other commodity with defined quality standards, if the supply is short then downstream refiners/users will have to compete for and adjust the price commodity accordingly, and in a situation of a glut/oversupply, will pick and choose suppliers based on price/margins and won't hesitate to send suppliers/producers bankrupt.