Had a read of this earlier this morn, brilliant overview/outlook of the supply chain, and the potential problems going forward. Good analysis and confirmation of the conversion capacity bottlenecks, which I would say US/China trade war is somewhat to blame for slower ramp up, (access to capital, confindence to invest, etc).
It's interesting how the Morgan Stanley's and Co include all announced mine nameplate (paper) supply in their forward estimates, but not the chem converter announced namplate capacity, seems a little bit convenient IMO
. Nonetheless, converter capacity is abviously the problem atm, which if not rectified sooner rather than later, this will create other bottlenecks further down the supply chain (i.e. battery shortages, which is the case atm).
Due to sentiment, very clear not enough investment to feed medium term (2-3 year) battery demand, thus and as BMI say, will lead to the boom & bust scenarios (like now) going forward, as opposed to constant and gradual demand pull. I believe the business model is changing, where large players are vertically integrating, say (miner + chem converter) and (cathode/anode + cell maker) in order to derive efficiency gains from scale. This will take awhile to play out, and therefore, expect lots of M&A and JV activity over the next 18 months.
(20min delay)