Banter and General Comments, page-20134

Ok, let's do that then! - Your opportunity to get rid of me.

Interesting angle.
It appears that Livent is our only window into Nemaska now, and hopefully some of the analysts on the earnings calls are clued up enough to continue the flow of information about the Whabouchi & Shawinigan projects.

Livent wise, just checking the announcement by Orocobre... They tell the market that they are sold out until additional production comes online mid next year.

budgeted FY22 production is fully sold and subject to variable pricing that will benefit from the expected continued improvement in market conditions. Additional production will become available when Olaroz Stage 2 commences production in the second half of CY22.

I wonder if Livent is happy plodding along relying on 3rd party supply. I am guessing it would be them securing whatever is left after Orocobre send the rest to their Japan hydroxide plant, but relying on Orocobre to achieve their expansion by middle of next year does seem a bit fool hardy...

@SplitFusion I liked the part where you discussed a bidding war with not enough players to have that war, because something else that's worth adding is the number of near term spodumene producers in North America. There isn't very many that appear to be seriously capable of bringing new supply into the market other than Piedmont and Galaxy.
The catch might be that of if the new Nemaska pushes Shawinigan to the side for the moment and is happy to sell their spodumene as a bandage to bring cash into their business.

I don't think whoever acquires NAL would be selling the spodumene there. It's said to be quite poor quality, the only value in their assets is the converter which is going to cost quite a lot of cash to bring back online. Someone mentioned in the region of $100 million per perhaps quite more.

Good point on Tesla semi's... Those things apparently take the equivalent of 10 Tesla's worth of lithium. That's going to be an incredibly large amount of strain, especially when other companies start trying to keep up and match the offering.

Does anyone know when we should have an announcement about who is acquiring NAL?
I see one company talking like they already won the bidding. With the MD dreamy eyed about the time he walked up a hill and could see the converter not far waving back at him.