I think most people need to understand what the SC6% China spod...

I think most people need to understand what the SC6% China spod price actually is. Yes Greenbushes is the only entity producing 6% grade spodumene. That entity is owned by Albermale and Tianqi/IGO. Tianqi sell their spodumene into their own facilities in China to convert to carbonate/hydroxide. You would have to question that price because you may want to low ball your export price out of Australia for other reasons.

The real gauge for pricing is sale of spodumene by producers who do not have downstream facilities. And in terms of that well I would expect prices to be above these tailored benchmarks most quote on here. Look at PLS when it was selling - its prices were well above those quoted prices. I wonder why??? And they are not even selling 6% grade.

Lithium pricing is opaque and China dominates downstream processing as well, so needing to break China's dominance is a key. What China is doing in Africa is a concern for producers who are a long way from production because getting access to resources there IMO will allow further price manipulation, so establishing yourself in the market like PLS has in the interim is a key - meaning been in production now or about to be in production. And better still, having contracts to supplying non-Chinese entities not operating in China is even better.

Opaque indices can be manipulated - just ask Glencore who got fined on how it manipulated the Platts index -Office of Public Affairs | Glencore Entered Guilty Pleas to Foreign Bribery and Market Manipulation Schemes | United States Department of Justice

It is probably about time the Australian Government introduces a no 'Chinese' direct investment in Australian mines policy - clearly entering offtakes is fine, but having direct investment/ownership of Australian resources is becoming problematic as in opaque markets price manipulation occurs - refer to Tianqi comment above. The other issue is obviously Europe/USA companies have the attention span of ducks - meaning short term outlook - whereas the Chinese have 50 year plus outlooks, hence why China is starting to dominate markets. China is clearly is seeking vertical intergration and when that happens price manipulation becomes stronger.

China's dominance

I have consistently posted on these threads that western economies need to break China's dominance in term of downstream chemicals capacity/batteries etc etc to grow their own economies and get EV capacity back into their own countries. Having a country dominate the EV market and its inputs can only lead to price manipulation and/or that dominance used for 'political purposes' (i.e. just look at what China did to Japan in the rare earths supply market). I posted the graph below a while back, and to be clear China is becoming more vertically intergrated in upstream to downstream markets, as for example it actually controls the cobalt supply in the DRC, so breaking that dominance is getting harder.



This article is also on point on Chinese dominance in Indonesia's nickel market.

The true cost of China's hold on Indonesia's nickel - Asia Times

All IMO