The premise behind the majority of some of the above comentaryry is wrong either because it is factually incorrect or selective use of the data being trawling through.
No such thing as ‘battery grade’ spodumene concentrate. There is only the following….. ‘Chemical Grade’ spodumene concentrate as purchased by the chemical conversion industry, and ‘Technical Grade’ spodumene concentrate, as purchased by the speciality glass and ceramics industry. On the other hand, there is such a thing as ‘Battery Grade’ lithium chemicals. To be clear, ‘Chemical Grade’ spodumene concentrate can typically manufacture ‘Battery Grade’ lithium chemicals.
In fact, ‘Chemical Grade’ spodumene concentrates (in hands of the right chemical convertor) can readily make ‘ultra-high-purity’ lithium carbonate, which is 99.99% purity. Again to be clear, Fe2O3 is not a key determinate for the grade of lithium chemicals produced. In China, they have a standard for the sale of Spodumene concentrates (SC6.0) in which the Fe2O3 threshold is 2.5%. In PLS's case, the offtake agreements limits are around 1.8%, and these are the same guys producing ‘Battery Grade’ and ultra-high purity lithium chemicals. In the case of Pilbara Mineral’s Pilgangoora Project and the Fe2O3 / Iron debate, there is no conspiracy here despite peoples assertions that there must be…….. Having relatively low level’s of Fe2O3in the resource. Subsets of the resource (as is the case at Greenbushes) are suitable for the recovery of ‘Technical Grade’ spodumene concentrates, because they are higher grade and carry lower background levels of Fe2O3 which are readily removed in the plant. Testwork has demonstrated that PLS can achieve about 0.15% Fe2O3in the Technical Grade concentrate. You can’t compare the global resource and reserve to the requirements of a Technical Grade spodumene, because only a subset of the Resource (With PLS's case, its typically ‘Eastern Lode’
is suitable for the technical grade product. With respect to ‘introduced iron’ from the milling circuit…………… grinding for the purpose of flotation and it introduces iron to the process (over and above the Fe2O3 from the ore). In the commissioning and ramp-up of the plant PLS have found that there is insufficient low-intensity magnetic separation (LIMS) equipment to deal with the mass-flow through the flotation circuit. As a result about 50% of the ore/iron/water flowing downstream bypasses the LIMS, and therefore does not remove the iron. This is simply a design fault and requires the retrofit of additional LIMS units. Not that expensive a job and will make a material improvement to the recovery rates through the plant.
I am not concerned about PLS's Fe203 levels and nor are the buyers.
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