There isn't actually much in the price. Battery Grade lithium...

There isn't actually much in the price. Battery Grade lithium metal is CNY 687,500/t. Niobium is CNY 645,000/t so even after the huge drop in lithium's price and the large increase in Niobium price, Niobium is still a slightly less valuable metal than Lithium (basing value on spot prices per ton of battery grade/pure metal). While the commonly quoted Lithium price is Lithium Carbonate (or Lithium Hydroxide) both are combining a lot of Oxygen atoms along with the lithium. Oxygen atoms are much heavier so the lithium percent in Carbonate or Hydroxide is surprisingly low.

Albemarle notes the 2024 lithium market is ~1.3Mt of LCE (224kt of pure metal equivalent). The Niobium market is estimated at 107kt by Mordor Intelligence and is estimated to grow at a good ~6% pa. In 2023 it had shrunk to under 100kt. Lithium is forecast to grow at nearer 15-20% pa in size. Lithium is both a bigger market and growing more quickly.

Unless you are the first or possibly the 2nd western Niobium mine into production, I suspect that things will be difficult both in terms of strong off-take agreements and a probable reduction in price as someone makes it into production materially adding to supply (WA1?). Niobium can have higher in-ground grades than lithium (above 2%?) while a good in-ground grade for lithium is anything above about ~0.6% (1.29% Li2O). Those deposits with 2% niobium grades are going to have a huge incentive to increase production if the price remains were it is, and that could well trigger the next price collapse for Niobium. Based on in-ground grades, you would expect Niobium to have a much lower price than Lithium.