Lithium Related Media Articles, page-27977

Thanks @Process1

Thanks to Bloomberg .
They have now reveiled what I was saying for a long time. Bloomberg id the media arm of the NEOT IMO but they are right on the spot this time.

I said all of these before. See my post below. It was obvious that there was enough supply in the market for Chinese to push the prices down.

However I was nearly sure that the supply glut was coming China's dirty lepidolite mines because there was no way that this much lithium was coming from Africa and Sth America. (I know all the production in Africa and Sth America).

My Post #: 79075407 on May 16.
------------------------------------------------------
I am making a lot of research and I am quite sure that China opened its all lepidolite mines and operating them at full capacity but at huge loss for keeping the lithium price down.

Chinese gov must be subsidising it all. But they are hiding it at this stage of trade talks with the US.

Otherwise there is no way that this much lithium is coming from Africa and Sth America. The lithium supply from everywhere other than Australia will be unstable and dangerous for the Chinese.

The African countries where they get lithium from are all landlocked (Zimbabwe, Mali and DRC). The Chinese has to deal with and feed to more than one gov officials for producing and transporting the lithium from there to China.

They are kicked out from Canada, They are kicked out from Mexico. They may be kicked out from Chili and/or Bolivia at any time.

Only Argentina is friendly to Chinese but you never know, if the gov. changes or the existing gov changes its policy to Chinese, then there you go. Out of the another country again.

All of those countries are now in the knowledge of lithium as strategic mineral. They will play this card. So it's not easy for the Chinese to exploit the lithium resources of those countries including Africa.

When the Chinese realises these issues then they will give up pushing the lithium price down and turn back to the most stable and quality resources of Australia.

So, LTR is doing well for now, and will do much better in the near future. It doesn't matter if it's taken over or not. It will generate billions od dollars in revenues and profit. That is for sure for me.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I also said the similar things on my post #:78998869 on May 11

Here is China's estimated LCE (basically lithium carbonate) production costs below.

Today the lithium carbonate price in China spot market (if it's a spot market, not controlled by Chinese gov.) is 63k RMB or US$8,750/t.

An then look at the table below. What you see is true. Majority of the Chinese production is in loss if it's being produced. Even the high grade lepidolite mines (they are small and not big capacity and reserves) can't make a profit. Integrated spod section has a also very small capacity. Only Qinghai brine operation is OK.

We can assume, that it's highly probable, the Chinese gov. is subsidising all those resource operations and pays their losses. How long they will do that?



Yes the Chinese is pushing the lithium price down, it's a fact. The Chinse gov. subsidises its lithium supply chain against the west. Even the EU commission decided after making an investigation last year, found out that the Chinese gov subsidises its own companies and increased the tariffs for the Chinese EVs. That's a fact too.

But do we know why do they do that?

We always said the Chinese would shoot themselves in their own foot by lowering the price of lithium, but they still do it, lowering the price. Apparently they do it by mining their own resource like crazy, even though the CCP said its miners (when they stop lepidolite mining) not to deplete their own strategic resources. Otherwise there is not a big lithium supply glut from other parts of the world. In contrary the Australian supply went down around 25% this year.

Then why the Chinse gov. do that?
It's simple actually. They have always had a plan, they were working on all aspects of electrification for more than 10 years, but the western's lazy asses didn't want to see that.

They think that even if they take out Australian supply out of their supply chain (by the way Greenbushes will still be producing because it's under Chinese control), the lithium supply from Sth America and Africa, and their own resources would be enough for themselves for a while but they would be successful to stop all the development of lithium and battery supply chain in the west, and the will make the West to be dependent on the Chinese electrification products.

That'd be unbalanced world indeed. I know the western govs are seeing that plan for sure. Bu the question is if they are going to act swiftly or keep ignoring it. Are they going to subsidise their own lithium-battery supply chains?