Thanks for posting, @GCar and broadly agree with that. But...

Thanks for posting, @GCar and broadly agree with that. But whatever the commodity I'm always a bit careful with "up-and-to-the-right" demand charts as there's been zillions of those since the beginning of time and to quote Forrest Gump, "#%*% happens" and things never turn out to be so linear (as indeed 2017-2024 has provided so far in lithium). The likes of BMI make their dough by releasing these reports so there's never a shortage of new predictions. I am reminded of the copper demand charts that have been floating around since the early-mid 2010's all showing massive deficits by 2018/2019 with "structural deficits" etc... in any commodity cycle there will obviously be periods of oversupply and undersupply and price swings each way. At the moment based on data I've seen in a JPM report, Chinese lithium supply in 2024 is ramping YTD harder than any of the previous three years. That suggests one of two things (or perhaps a combo). 1) there's heaps of demand in China (except were that the case you'd think that they'd also be needing to hit the spot market bid?) or 2) the big integrated players are happy to run the upstream lepidolite mining at a loss because they make all the margin downstream in the refining/batteries. I don't know the answer, but the reason I raise that is that the second chart you include (in colour) shows that if something in China is integrated, the cost curve matters a lot less.

When I think back - with the benefit of hindsight of course - at the commentary about lepidolite, I don't recall any analysts flagging the potential that China would be happy to flood the market even at an upstream loss potentially to ensure cheap raw materials for big battery business, where they might really make the dough. Just another example of where "yuuuuge demand" narratives nearly always get derailed by something unforeseen. Cheers