WR1 General Discussion, page-30724

Since Kev raised the issue of high opex crucifying lithium operations in this tough price environment I suppose it does make sense that mines in Tier 1 countries do need to have large scale, cost efficient operations in order to compete with third world locations. Obviously CXO can't compete or else they'd be re-starting mining operations at Finniss, and Kev has highlighted SYA. I don't know too much about SYA other than they aren't large scale producers but I do know that CXO had something like a 13:1 strip ratio at their Grants mine. From what I gather at Adina it'll be a very low strip ratio to extract the first few years' ore and they'll certainly be looking to process far more tpa than CXO, so even allowing for greater transport costs I'd hope it'd be much more cost competitive. The other factor to consider is that if the planned supply chains into the US materialise and EV take-up there blossoms in the next few years Canadian suppliers should be well placed. In short there's no way we can confidently start writing off mining jurisdictions based on what we see today.