Ann: Galan Lithium Limited Appoints CFO, page-59

There are very few (if any) juniors who have been able to organise debt deals, most relied entirely on equity during the Li bull market but that pathway is now closed - with market caps in the doldrums, nobody can raise enough to fund the typical project capex especially given 15% placement limitations. So yes, new supply in the near/mid-term will likely come from existing producers - the big boys all have their own expansion plans already, and they have the money. As for HMW, I don't think GLN can take it much further unless they get debt, and that comes with its own risks right now. The time for HMW to be acquired - by LTM or anybody else - has passed. Nobody really knows if JP & co received any inbound interest over the past ~3 years but if they did, they knocked it back in far better market conditions than now. If they declined to sell out then, they'd be foolish to do it now. So long as there is no debt on the balance sheet, nobody can take the asset off them, which is key.

Lastly, if you go on MarketIndex and search 'lithium', you get ~85 companies (including some that should probably be removed, like De Grey and Rio). But even at say 80 companies, that's crazy. 37 of them are under $20M market cap. 58 are under $100M. How many of them are actually adding any real value to the sector, or will ever get into production? As a fundie pointed out recently on Money of Mine, this is exactly what happened in the Iron Ore boom in the mid 2000's - heaps of companies appear when the market's hot, but it's only the big players who prosper long term (FMG is pretty much the only junior out of oodles who thrived and survived in that space). Hopefully Galan, with a genuine resource, will be one who can bunker down and get through this. I suspect PLS is the lithium equivalent of iron ore's FMG.