But now Nemaska has run up against a $C325M cash shortfall, and analysts say it can sell it’s lithium (8,000 t/y or about 25% of its production) for better money elsewhere ...... so last February “the knives came out”; https://investingnews.com/daily/res...m-supply-deal-following-financing-challenges/
“We view termination of the Livent supply agreement as positive,” Eight Capital analysts said in a note to clients.
“We don’t foresee difficulty in finding a buyer for the 8,000 tonnes, allowing Nemaska to sell at higher prices,” they said. “Having 25 percent of its production available suddenly makes room for a senior partner, which could help with the C$375 million financing pinch [Nemaska] finds itself in.”
As @Rupfel noted, a few weeks later Livent was talking about picking up a nice, cheap, long life lithium mine in Australia :
On March 27 Henry Sanderson ( https://www.ft.com/content/d3935162-509f-11e9-9c76-bf4a0ce37d49) reported the Livent CEO, Paul Graves ( a former mergers and acquisitions banker at Goldman Sachs ) said Livent was looking for cheap high quality assets in Argentina and Australia .
He said while Livent already owned an Andean lithium brine salt lake in Argentina; Salar del Hombre Muerto, it was looking to acquire another brine resource in Argentina and also wanted to buy a lithium mine in Australia.
From the story:
“We will acquire a hard rock resource if we can. It’s got to be a high quality resource, a long-life resource,” he told the Financial Times.
We’re looking now. We’re talking to people now.....
A good resource is all we care about.”
So maybe the next step in the story is that Albemarle will acquire Livent and Altura ?
Although the AJM hints if useful visits to China don’t seem relevant to this outcome ?
