I found this chart in quite a recent article. Here are my comments and remember it is only hard rock deposits.
- there are really only a few mines in production ie 4 and they are all BIG deposits - the LTR and CXO ones are still in development
- I assume the one to the far right is AVZ, the 2nd from the left is probably green bushes with the next to the left being PLS, not sure which the other 2 producing mines are but they will be either MinRes or IGO mines.
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- LTR is probably the one left of Mt Marion which will be producing soonish. And CXO will be one of the smaller ones 30mt or under
- there are only 10 deposits over 100mt - 5 apparently are in WA and 1 is in NT (LTR) and 1 is AVZ making 7 of the 10. Not sure where the other 3 are overseas (one is not PMT as it does not have a resource yet but when it does it will probably be close to 200mt or so. One has a grade of 0.5% which is low and is in development. 4 of the ten are under development
- there are a lot of smaller deposits under 50mt and many are in development even deposits around 20-25mt or lower. I have doubts many will end up in production. The ones over 50mt will probably end up producing maybe with the exception of the one with a grade of 0.5%.Even if the ones 25mt or lower end up in production they may not last the distance as a surplus will come and they will probably struggle at low Li prices.
My conclusions are (not just based on this chart):
- most of the current Li explorers will never get into production unless they end up with a big resource (ie probably 100mt or over). Even many of those with a resource 25mt or lower currently in development will not end up in production
- If AZS ends up with a resource below 50mt it probably will never be a producer as it’s late to Li exploration.
How big will AZS’s resource end up? We will know within a year maybe even less.
