LTR's Lithium Hydroxide is not for China indeed, it's for the US and European market.
LTR's offtake customers are not from China either.
The fact is that most western major EV OEMs are using Nickel based batteries, namely NMC (Nickel-Manganese-Cobalt) and NCA (Nickel-Cobalt-Aluminium).
All of the nickel based batteries (6-2-2 and 8-1-1 ratios for Ni-Mn-Co) requires LITHIUM HYDROXIDE for their cathodes.
They also use LFP but very little.
See the table below for the EV OEMs and their battery suppliers and their battery types below. You will majority needs LITHIUM HYDROXIDE.
The fact is in this table below.
We have nothing to do with SMM.
Just be aware that majority of those companies in the graph below are European and Korean.
There is CATL in this table as a major battery producer but I'm sure CATL will be accused of using non-ESG compliant lithium in their batteries soon in Europe and it's production will be stopped by the European regulators IMO,
because CATL is the major buyer and even owner of those very polluting lepidolite mines which create huge unmanaged waste. So CATL will not be able to get the Battery Passport which the EU will impose soon.
The fact about lithium hydroxide price is that LTR won't take SSM for benchmarking. We know from the past that when Lith Hyd price was say 200k RMB in China market, the Japanese and Korean companies were paying 30%-50% more than that because the quality is being different.
So, just stop talking crap here.
The US and Europe will produce huge amount of batteries in next 2 years.
There is huge number and capacity of Gigafactories being built and planned. Just see those graphs below. And imagine the lithium demand from those giga factories. It's not only the European and the US companies are buiding those factoies, but it's the Japanese, the Korean, and even the Chinese companies. But the Chinese will have to do the right thing and comly with ESG and Battery Passport to produce batteries in Europe and the US.
See the graphs. And see the capacity. It's huge.
These are the facts. Just open your eyes and look at the capacity.
DYOR, don't listen the crap written here.
LTR is starting production just in the right time.
(20min delay)