ASX Today, page-41772

Fellow Shareholders

I listened in on a recent panel discussion with five leading lithium experts - Joe Lowry being one of them. Among many interesting exchanges two stood out. 1. Trump being elected president and if this is a risk to the IRA. It is not, according to some quoted high-end lawyers on Wall Street. First of all the IRA has been passed by congress and is now LAW. It is very hard, time consuming and expensive to back track a law apparently. Trump tried with Obama Care - couldn't do it. Secondly, all or most USA's mega factories are positioned in the bible/rust belt where Trump supporters dominate. You don't want to take away voters' livelihood. So this was a positive. But then the question of Chinese lepidolite came up. The general consensus has been that such a crap ore should self regulate and fall out of favour. Not so - according to Joe. With state backed lepidolite miners supplying the country with cheap lithium (never mind the environment and the state coffers) then China is not buying on the world market, and the price stays low. Now my take on this is that China is robbing Peter to pay Paul on so many levels. Furthermore - as Anatol pointed out - in the whole of China the total volume of even THIS crappy ore is no more than what we have at Kathleen Valley so it should not take that long to run out. Finally, the dark horse in the debate is the amounts of lithium needed for grid batteries, power walks and power tools, lawnmowers etc. Its share of the lithium sector was only 7% last year and is growing exponentially whilst nobody is looking.