Hard rock spodumene mining and processing seems very expensive,...

Hard rock spodumene mining and processing seems very expensive, and relies on very cheap energy, and low environmental standards as there is a lot of waste material in all stages of the process. There hasn't been a second tier one project after Greenbushes. It seems that the (I call them) tier two hard rock miners in conjunction with Chinese processors are setting the marginal cost of Lithium at a very profitable level, if better, lower unit cost tech comes along.

The other thing that is interesting is that the industry is shipping around 6% spod, so it could be feasible to produce a liquid LiOH conc from lithium phsophate that could be shipped to a processor for further refining in a location with lower energy prices. The process wouldn't have to be absolutely perfect to win a lot of market share.

I believe a Lithium Carbonate producing briner operating in Chile has been looking/has looked at shipping a liquid LiCl conc (I.e. before converting to lithium Carbonate) to a Tesla gigafactory in the US - not sure how far that has got, but it makes a lot of sense to be as efficient as possible. It is a very simple reaction to convert LiCl to LiOH, and the process to purify the LiOH is already known. The gigafactories may just as happily accept LiOH in conc, or LiCl if that can be produced from Li3O4P as a precursor product. If anybody knows more about the feasibility of that, would be keen to hear.