General Discussion Topics, page-120869

“The Kwinana refinery operated by Tianqi Lithium produced just 142 tonnes of the battery-grade chemical in the three months to June 30, the project’s joint venture partner IGO said in its June quarter update on Monday. That was down 85 per cent from the March quarter, and a tiny fraction of its goal of 24,000t a year.”

https://thewest.com.au/business/mining/plummeting-production-at-igo-and-tianqis-kwinana-refinery-show-australias-lithium-refining-challenge-c-11442182

Anyone building a lithium hydroxide plant outside of China might want to take a look at how hard it can be.

It would be disastrous for a young company like Sayona to squander the profits they make from mining on chemical conversion that they are I’ll equipped to do.

I can’t see any way that SYA would be in a position to become a lithium hydroxide producer unless it was in a joint venture with a chemical company like POSCO or LG Chem and only then if they had a stake of ~20%.

Companies like PLS and AKE have grown to the size they are now almost totally on the back of their upstream operations.

The time to be throwing money at up-stream projects is when surplus cash is available.

SYA is a long way from that eventuality.