Financial Review Artical, page-150

There is a huge global battle unfolding .

China is both hungry for massive amount of domestic lithium plus lithium around the globe to support its battery and carmaking behemoths .

This is why securing lithium is critical across the globe .

The Manono lithium is truly massive and high quality and can be developed into the biggest , cheapest , best quality supply for the next 30 years at least (and don’t forget the tin) .

The non-Tesla brigade need it like oxygen to survive .

It’s actually a geopolitical resource .

*Ditto, I concur, well said Ericson,

Fyi, to add,

China’s lithium appetite to fuel European production, miner says

An Australian company on track to become Europe’s first lithium producer said China’s appetite for the material, which is key to the renewable-energy transition, has created a clear runway for further expansion in the continent.

“A lot of supply is going into China, and China’s own needs are growing,” Critical Metals Corp. Executive Chairman Tony Sage said in a Bloomberg Television interview from Perth on Wednesday.

The Asian nation’s domination of the market means “there are another four or five players in Europe also hoping to get into production” and “we are going to be the first,” he said.

Sage was speaking a day after the unit of Australian miner European Lithium Ltd. agreed to go public on Nasdaq through a merger with blank-check company Sizzle Acquisition Corp.

The combined entity — Critical Metals — will own European Lithium’s project in Wolfsberg, Austria.

Critical Metals is attempting to cash in on soaring demand for lithium, with prices soaring this year as global demand for the key battery ingredient booms while supply remains constrained.

The US has urged allies to diversify supply due to concerns over China’s domination of refining and production capacity for key materials including lithium, rare earths and cobalt.

“Look at rare earths — when China needs them for themselves, they stop the exports,” Sage said.

“That’s why Europe makes lithium a critical mineral, for the purpose is to break that sort of reliance on China to produce the concentrate for the batteries.”

Critical Metals was eying other lithium deposits in Europe for potential expansion, Sage said.

At this stage, he didn’t see any big projects adding enough output to halt steep price rises for the material, he said.

Chile’s constitutional assembly voted down plans in May to nationalize mining rights for lithium.

Still, the prospect — along with environmental concerns about brine extraction — may subdue a rush for supply from that region, Sage said.

European Lithium in August announced an agreement with BMW AG to supply battery-grade lithium hydroxide.

The firm hopes to add consumers including electric-vehicle and battery manufacturers in the region, and expects Wolfsberg to supply approximately 10,500 metric tons of lithium concentrate annually by 2025.

Volkswagen: we have never had supply chain shortages like today

Volkswagen is entering into direct purchase agreements in unprecedented areas to tackle the worst supply chain shortages the company has seen, its purchasing chief Murat Aksel said on Tuesday.

The carmaker was also building a database to help predict geopolitical, natural and supply chain risks ahead of time, as it did for financial risks after the 2008 financial crisis, Aksel added.

“We never used to talk to mining operators – now we know their business model,” Aksel told a conference in Berlin.

“It is no longer enough to rely on Tier 1 suppliers – we need to look behind the curtains ourselves.”

Biden’s EV minerals cash fruitless without permitting reform

Washington’s growing financial support for companies that produce metals used in electric vehicles will likely prove fruitless unless the federal government streamlines the mine permitting process, investors, executives and consultants told Reuters.

President Joe Biden last week doled out $2.8 billion to miners developing new US sources of lithium, nickel, copper and other EV minerals, as well as battery parts manufacturers and recyclers.

Those grants followed August’s Inflation Reduction Act, which links EV tax credits to minerals extracted domestically or from 20 allies.

Both measures aim to spur domestic mining and push the country closer to Biden’s goal for half of all new US vehicles to be electric by 2030.

But it currently takes a decade or longer to obtain a US mining permit, an arduous process that frustrates miners who welcome the financial support but want more permitting transparency.

Biden’s administration has also opposed permits for several proposed mines.

“The US government is saying ‘Go! Go! Go!,’ but the environmental review process is extremely cumbersome,” said Jerry Hicks at the Optica Rare Earths & Critical Materials ETF, which holds shares of Albemarle Corp, Freeport-McMoRan Inc and Glencore Plc.

“China has the infrastructure in place, and it’s going to take a long time for the US to get anywhere close.”

Senator Joe Manchin, a West Virginia Democrat, failed to push permitting reform through Congress last month, though he is expected to try again later this year.

“What I would like, if I could ask for something, is predictability,” said Arne Frandsen, chief executive of mining investment group Pallinghurst and a director at Talon Metals Corp, which received $114.8 million from Biden to partially fund a nickel processing plant in North Dakota that will supply Tesla Inc.

“It’s difficult to get capital to commit if you don’t know if you’ll get a permit in 12 months or five years.”

www.mining.com/category/battery-metals/





Food for thought on the Road to Mining Manono

GLTAH's

Til next time

Cheers

Frank