ASX Today, page-24051

Thanks for the news @crustymagyver

There are interesting comments from Masters, the CEO of Albemarle;

"WA is one of the geographies that we will look at for (more) conversions... We need to build another plant, and then we need more resource, and then we need more plants... this trend is going to go on for quite a long time"

"Every time we meet with one of our significant customers, they want to know how fast we can go and how much more we can give them"
"At the moment we have enough resource to grow but as we look out towards the end of the decade, we'll need more resource."

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Yes, Albemarle will need more resource at the end of this decade. That's for sure. I told this long time ago after making some calculations at ALB's mining rate at Greenbushes mine.

Firstly let's have a look at what I said on Post #:55936018 on Sept. 9 2021 (and before that (and long before that Post #: 39833185on Aug. 2 2019)
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"The high grade resource life of Greenbushes is limited with about 10 to 12 years".
That makes KV Project more valuable as its life will be more than 25 years (even may be 40 years by more drilling)

When we talk about Greenbushes mine; (as it was explained on my post #:39833185

• It is the highest grade, the lowest cost hard rock lithium mine in the world,
• Iti is a mine which also has a very close cost (in LCE terms) to brine operations,
• It is the mine which will produce the lithium hydroxide (in Tianqi and Albemarle refineries in WA) at a lower price than the LCE cost of lithium brine producers,
• It can be a threat for all other lithium producers with its low price and high quality SC6 (SC6 standard was set by Greenbushes mine)
• It was ramping up its production to 24mt spodumene concentrate, and maybe more ( but not sure the latest output).

Unfortunately for them but fortunately for the other producers, their high grade resource life is limited with about 10 to 15 years.

They have a resource in C3 lithium pit for 120mt @2.4% Li2O or 170mt at 2.00% Li2O.By this pace of production (10mt a year ore process for 2.4mt SC6 production, plus new extensions) that deposit will last 10 to 15 years.





When it comes to speculation, I was talking about Tesla should have bought ALB, and ALB should buy LTR. Here are the post about that;


My Post #: 61096083 April 22 2022;

Anything can happen atm; Takeover, merging, JV, etc. everything is on the table. It's very to make a guess because the lithium supply chain is under a big constrain.

Just imagine that in the last 3 years no new hard rock deposit has been discovered even at a level of one forth of KV project (156mt / 5 = 39mt).

You can imagine any kind of scenarios. The time for big M&As are coming soon I guess.

Tesla may buy Albemarle. Then Tesla would be controlling nearly 50% of world lithium resources under operation or development. 49% of Greenbushes, 60% of Wodgina (JV with MIN), 35% of world brine sales because of Atacama operations, etc, etc. Plus Tesla has couple of offtake agreements with LTR, WES (Earl Grey deposit), and others.

That would be much better for LTR if Tesla buys Albemarle than Tesla buys LTR, because then LTR's sp will fly more than the Tesla's T/O for LTR as there will be less lithium for other OEMs.
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My Post #:61097603 on April 29 2022

Just check out Albemarle's operations and see how big they are.

I would also think Tesla would buy Albemarle after Albemarle bought LTR, but that would be hard because Albemarle can't afford to buy LTR because their balance sheet is not that good IMO unless Tesla would help or ask Albemarle to buy LTR first.