@setfire2thehive, my response is here, not sure what happened with my earlier reply to you:
In terms of what you asked here too me and the Dr here is some preliminary comment:
Conversions - spodumene
A while ago I did some conversions - spodumene has a theoretical content of 8.03% Li20, with LI content essentially 3.7. If you produce 6.0% Li20 you get theoretical Li content of about 2.8, or another way to put it 75% of your 6% grade spodumene export is spodumene, the rest junk.
Conversion - carbonate/hydroxide
Lithium carbonate (Li2CO3) has a Li content of 18.8, so need about 7.5 tonnes of 6% grade spodumene at a 90% recovery rate in the roasting process.
Lithium hydroxide monohydrate (LioH.H20) has a Li content of 16.5%, so need about 6.5 tonnes of 6% grade spodumene at a 90% recovery rate. Lithium hydroxide (LioH) has a Li content of 29%, so need about 11.5 tonnes of 6% grade spodumene at a 90% recovery rate.
If recovery is lower - I also understand it could be 85% - then your spodumene input is higher etc.
The reported price for hydroxide is lithium hydroxide monohydrate (min 56.5% LioH.H20, meaning the other 44% is presumably water theoretically), compared to carbonate which prices are based on 99.5% -Li2C03. I suspect your monohydrate comes from the more purer form of hydroxide (LioH), that is then ineffect 'reacted' in process to get to your commercially graded monohydrate (LioH.H20 - battery grade I guess) which is the reported prices. It is probably where my confusion is as I always think of lithium hydroxide as LioH instead of the monohydrate of LioH.H20, and assume the former is derived first before deriving the latter (monohydrate). Probably I need to do more research to get a better understanding of the hydroxide process for getting to monohydrate etc.
What is been said:
If your mine grades 1.5% Li20, like AVZ. you need 5 tonnes of ore to produce 6% grade spodumene concentrate. If your mine grades 1.2% Li20, like say GXY or PLS, you need 6.2 tonnes of ore to produce 6% grade spodumene. The key though is that the export still contains 75% spodumene in the 6% grade spodumene export. So this where you get your cost differences at mine - number of tonnes to produce 6% grade spodumene.
Now lets get to those comments. I struggle to see how you have diverging differences in producing lithium carbonate hydroxide by tonnes of spodumene input given it is 6% grade spodumene export and 25% junk from the minesite as the input.
The predominant only way you get such differences is either you are exporting less than 6% grade spodumene, meaning it has greater % junk, or greater than 6% grade spodumene, which has less than 25% junk. At the end of the day the roasting process for producing say carbonate at 1050 degrees is very energy intensive and recovery of spodumene is around 90% (but I have read it could be 85%).
Unless what ML is saying is that the impurities of the 25% junk in the 6% grade spodumene are not that great compared to AVZ's 'junk 25%' in the spodumene concentrate that recovery of spod in the roasting process for producing LCE is less, but I find that difficult to also accept given GXY has been selling its ore in the early days, and even of late, at plus US$900 per tonne. The same goes for Min who has been selling its 6% grade spodumene at greater than US$850 per tonne of late despite its much lower Li20 content than AVZ in the ore. But without seeing the actual information and composition of the 25% junk difficult to further comment - there might be an element of truth but probably not at the scale stated IMO IMO The real question on 6% grade spodumene price is when will the price reduce, meaning when will the demand/supply current imbalance come into balance and cause spod prices to drift to US$600 to US$650 per tonne.
If the difference is at the mine site for producing 6% grade spodumene, if you need a greater ore number to produce 6% grade you might get a higher price, if the buyer is desperate for supply, which might be the theory behind GXY's prices, if it is aimed at standardising profits for producing, but I don't think that is the case either
What makes more sense too me is that PLS in its equity for Offtake Agreements accepted a lower 6% grade spodumene price as a means to enter the market, but that is a guess. In negotiations the desparation of the seller to enter the market (especially when this is their first mine) and buyer (who could claim they can buy spod from anywhere, as they were alraedy an existing customer of MIN, and are a large company like Ganfeng and can give equity and a very long term contract to underpin a bankable study), the buyer might bluff a lower price (albeit Ganfeng wasn't able to do it with Neo Metals and Min who has a lower grade deposit than AVZ btw).
Without getting further data difficult to quantify and qualify the claims.
@Dr_Manhattan may have a view as as well since you asked him the same question in your post). Anyway, just my thoughts, not dismissing the comment but trying to get a better handle on what is been said but the conversions above cause me some confusion here as to what is been said.
So in the interim I might sit on the fence on this one until I can understand the data itself leading to that statement.
All IMO IMO IMO IMO
