ASX Today, page-44140

Not surprised. I posted on the issues with lepidolite in this post and the fact it is not a long term solution - yes can be used to manipulate prices short term but longer term lepidolite is problematic, with further info around specs and issues in Post #: 71667622

In summary:
1. China's lepidolite is low grade, meaning higher cost of extraction and processing.
2. Lepidolite has higher impurities than spodumene even when both resources grade the same in terms of Li20. As a result the lower grade plus plus higher impurities make processing costs much higher for lepidolite.
3. Back in Jan 2024 it was stated in the press that 70% of concentrate destined for the Chinese chemical conversion process (i.e. into carbonate production) was rejected by chemical producers. I suspect that product would be lepidolite based IMO.

@TrayonRanger posted an article a few days back around a car fire caused by battery failure - that battery was produced in China was the quoted source. Not sure what the input was into the battery - i.e was it a spod or lepidolite source base - but if I was to speculate the higher deleterious elements in lepidolite too me makes any battery produced from lepidolite unreliable. I just wonder how much cost cutting was done to produce lithium carbonate from a lepidolite source. I will leave it at that.

All IMO