ASX Today, page-32366

Gina Rinehart has well and truly landed in WA’s white hot lithium sector.

The billionaire’s exploration partnership with Indian-owned Legacy Iron and her foot-in-the-door stakes in Delta Lithium and Vulcan Energy were merely the entree for a bigger bite.

With her Hancock Prospecting’s $300 million share raid on $6.6 billion takeover target Liontown Resources, Mrs Rinehart has snared a seat at the table in the escalating consolidation of the State’s fledgling but rapidly growing lithium industry.

And what Mrs Rinehart wants, she usually gets.

But just what does she want?

Having gone into the 2023 financial year awash in nearly $18 billion of cash, courtesy of its Pilbara iron ore mines, Hancock could easily swallow Liontown and its developing Kathleen Valley project off its own balance sheet should it launch its own tilt.

But its intervention in Albemarle’s record WA bid for the lithium miner suggests Australia’s richest person is seizing a readymade opportunity to grab a major foothold in in the battery metal in her home State by leveraging into a side deal with the bidder, perhaps as part of a broader consolidation play.

While Hancock has still to out itself, sources have confirmed it was behind Thursday’s trading blitz in Liontown.

Together with an disclosed stake already held, Mrs Rinehart’s flagship investment group is now thought to have about 10 per cent of Liontown - enough to block US bidder and battery chemicals giant Albemarle from moving to compulsory ownership of Liontown.

An advocate of coal and nuclear energy who earlier this year appointed climate change-denier Ian Plimer to one of her companies, Mrs Rinehart hasn’t embraced the same clean energy narrative around battery metals as her fellow WA mining bosses in Chris Ellison and Andrew Forrest.

But Hancock knows mining and she sees a chance to make money.

And she has a country partner in India who is looking to get as much WA lithium as it can - Liontown already has customers for its lithium - to support the ramp-up of its own electric car industry.

Shortly after Mrs Rinehart met privately with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi three months ago, Hancock signed a joint venture for it and the Indian-owned Legacy to look for lithium at Mt Bevan, north of Kalgoorlie.

Adding to the intrigue around the Liontown buy-up is Mr Ellison’s Mineral Resources.

MinRes partners with Albemarle at the Wodgina mine in the Pilbara under a long-standing, recently restructured joint venture but is looking to get bigger in lithium in its own right by pushing deeper into downstream processing.

The duo have been the busiest players of late in WA lithium, with Albemarle committing billions to build its Kemerton hydroxide plant near Bunbury and expand the Greenbushes mine, and MinRes chasing deposits in the Goldfields to feed its own ambitions in the battery metal.

However, MinRes and Hancock significantly have long-standing relationships through their mining interests and have co-operated in the past year to ensure they’ve succeeded in respective takeovers for gas companies in the Perth Basin.

So,. the Ellison group could well figure in Mrs Rinehart’s plan for the Liontown holding.

The pair own a combined 20 per cent or so of Delta, whose Mt Ida project adjoins Mt Bevan.

MinRes is also the major shareholder in Bill Beament’s Develop Global, which recently struck a deal to acquire the MinRes-backed Essential Metals and its Pioneer Dome lithium project near Kambalda.

The accelerating activity in WA lithium looks like the playbook of the first iron ore boom in the Noughties, where the industry consolidated around key players with the best resources.

And Mrs Rinehart isn’t going to miss out this time either.