Having an underground mine in these circumstances is the only good thing which could happen to us.LTR has already paid a lot of money for constructing the U/G mine. If we hadn't have the U/G mine today I'd be very scared for the future of company if I also considered the lithium price would be at these levels which I don't think so either.
Non of other mines other than Greenbushes and LTR will be making money at these lithium price levels of SC6 around US$750/t.
ALB-MIN JV Wodgina, PLS's Pilgangoora and MIN-Ganfeng JV's Mt Marion is making loss now if they still sell their lithium at the Chinese spot prices.
Btw, LTR won't be selling at same levels with Chinese spot market price. Take a note of that.
Most of the 4mt resource development also is embedded in the current mine cost. Our underground mine is already started through the high grade pegmatites of outcropped Mt Man zone and advanced 5000 meters down the depth by the decline tunnel. Maybe it's now close to 6000m. They open that tunnel through the very thick high grade Mt Man pegmatite and all of the material came out as high grade ore.
MIN-Ganfeng JV's Mt Marion mine is already making U/G work at their mines.
ALB-MIN JV's Wodgina mine has no possibility to start an U/G mine. Wodgina may think about it but it's very hard,.. PLS has no chance for an U/G mine IMO.
Arcadium for example, said on its latest quarterly report that they would stop the development of Galaxy (ex-James Bay) project in James Bay/Canada but they would keep working on Nemaska Project at James Bay/Canada
because Nemaska Project is also a U/G mine.
LTR will be able to mine the high grade ore (Ave. 2% I guess) from underground tunnels and process it at very low cost as Greenbushes mine does.
We have no problem with mining and processing of high grade ore. We wouldn't even think that we'd run out of high grade ore because it's still open at NW and at depth (see the graph below; Open, Open,.. Open)
Because we already have the U/G mining infrastructure we can mine as much as we want.
This is one of the cross-sections of drill holes. All holes are high grade but very high grade parts at between 180m and 250 as you can see. That thick section (like a tree body) is he Mt Man feeder zone as you guys may remember. I'm sure our decline tunnel has already passes that level and
we pulled out a lot of very high grade ore.
Now look at poor MIN-Ganfeng JV's Mt Marion U/G mine grade expectations. The grades they have found at 600m depth are inferior in comparison to LTR's KV project grades at even 200m depth. (From MIN's June 2024 report).
Max 1.8% grade at 630m depth, and only 18m. Other's are only 5.2m, 13.4m thick intervals.
If MIN thinks it's viable to make a U/G mine for these results, then LTR will be printing money with its U/G mine. 
The cost is a big problem for the open pit mines now.
The newest mine is Wodgina atm.
See MIN's July 2024 report for Wodgina below. (JV with ALB)
The SC6 based cost for the spod is AU$974/t or US$650/t.This is C1 cash cost and not All-in-sustained-cost which would be much higher than C1 cost.
AISC will be over US$700/t
How can Wodgina mine make any profit at today's lithium spod price of US$750/t then?
Same applies to PLS which has much older process plant.(Considering both Wodgina and PLS's Pilgangoora projects are at the same area and similar mines in geological terms; high iron content and high impurities).
The result is the current lithium price is no sustainable for all mines other than GB and LTR's KV projects.
Those miners have to come together and sit around the table to discuss the production cuts. Atm, they are all stupidly increasing production though.
PLS's is increasing its production but now it's making loss IMO.
That's wrong. That's a suicide.
Yes the low lithium price has already killed much of the capacity of Chinese lepidolite mines and Zimbabwe's poor petalite/spodumene mines China still needs to buy a lot of lithium, and its increasing ! It's obvious from Australian mine production because it's increasing a lot too, but stupidly in lower prices.
The EV sales in China has now reached over 53% of all vehicle sales. That's an incredible thing. More than 5 years early. It was planned for 2030 before as you know.
The Chinese also opening EV factories everywhere now. They need huge amount of lithium. Koreans, Japs, Europeans, and Americans they all need lithium. We just need to be a bit more patient, including the management of Australian lithium companies.
(20min delay)