I guess my point is that it doesn't matter. What matters is that the sources of Lithium can't be dismissed out of hand just because they are inconvenient. That this is the environment in which LTR operates and it will not change anytime soon.
That doesn't mean improvements are not being made. As far as I'm aware, CATL have taken steps to improve their environmental footprint at the request of customers. Others may be far dirtier. It's not a terrible strategy for a China or an India or Indonesia to ignore the damage for a period of time and once dominance is secured, begin to tighten regulations. I suspect some of that is occuring in China. I believe CATL made changes on that front when they took their Jianqxi operation offline.
If you look at the whole battery supply chain, it isn't particularly clean. Aus miners go to a lot of effort to woo investors with ESG efforts. Sigma got a green loan for their Brazilian operation. Unfortunately when that product ends up at a Chinese converter, who knows how it will be handled.
LTR has OTAs with Ford, LGES and Tesla. None have converters in Asia and realistically there is no guarantee LTR SC will end up as Chems used by any of those 3. They buy qualified chems or CAMs or cells, but do they track to make sure it was from LTR feed? Would it matter for their product? After all, what matters most is the spec of the products. That is why there is such a lengthy process of qualification.
I saw someone write of a 30km dead zone around a lepidolite operation due to sulphuric acid. It sounded a tad hyperbolic to me, but made me think that person has little idea of how Lithium is typically sulphuric acid leached from Spodumene Concentrate at converters that may rely on coal fired kilns.
I kinda figured with the failures of Australian converters, investors would realise that with our energy and labour costs as well as regulatory requirements how big a gap there is between China costs in general and ROW. You probably saw Northvolt fold spectacularly. So why is it a giant leap that China lepidolite is so much more costly than buying imported Aus SC?
It's pretty well known that China do not share their tech advancements. Yet we read countless opinions about DLE focused on the likes of Eramet and assumptions that Chinese must also struggle if the West, that only more recently devoted a fraction of the resources to it's development, have struggled.
I think I recall the same person talking of child labour and "toxic" Zinwaldite in Nigeria. Again seemed a little exaggerated and he dismissed the likelyhood that it represented a fraction of Nigerian DSO which is mostly probably Spodumene. Child labour might be effective for Cobalt and AFAIK occurs in the DRC nut it isn't very effective for hard rock lithium. Be it DSO or concentrate from Nigeria, does it matter if the result is that it ends up in China?
I'm digressing. My general point is yeah unfortunately there are countries with even fewer environmental standards than China. I don't think the average Tesla driver has seriously considered that child labour might have gone into their "green" vehicle. Tesla uses NCA cells containing Cobalt in many of their vehicles.
Were you unaware that the Chinese dominated supply chain into which you invested isn't particularly clean? Did you think that LTR's ESG credentials would make much of a difference or create change? Surely you understood what you were investing into? Or did you think Western consumers would force change and pay a whole lot more for it?
Don't get me wrong, I am and have been a strong supporter of energy storage and Lithium for many years. My eyes are open and I still think it is better than alternatives. The world is just not black and white.
I was also aware that China made a very long term decision to target the sector for dominance and that the advantages particularly in technology they developed along the way from a highly competitive and different mindset would be extremely difficult for the "West" to match.
I've seen how China have fostered the industry and let's face it, without China there would be no Liontown. There would be nowhere near this level of demand for EVs or ESS. China got the cost points down. It's incentives created a situation in which EVs can be cheaper than an ICE equivalent and ESS is being adopted en masse.
I'm also a little tired of reading so much rubbish that LTR is somehow outside the China net because it has non-Chinese long term OTAs. Doesn't seem to matter to those people that the SC is still going to be processed in China for the foreseeable future in full if not the majority. Call me crazy but I condsider PLS less dominant on supplying mainland China due to their partnership with POSCO and supply to Indonesia (to a Chinese owned converter - Chiangxi).
I've seen others try outside of China and all have had issues, especially around costs. They tend to really struggle to achieve spec. Take the POSCO JV with PLS in South Korea. That is a nation with great chemical expertise but they have struggled without access to Chinese tech. On the other hand the Indonesia converter looks more economically viable.
Consider the technical breakthroughs the Chinese achieved. Not so many years ago LFP was written off as a legacy cell type. Again, not so long ago, converters could only handle coarse Spodumene and they were either or proposition for salt type; investors would argue if a future downstream plant should be Hudroxide or Carbonate. Currently in China it's either and they can rapidly switch based on demand.
Is it so difficult to believe that they have made advancements when it comes to Lepidolite processing? Sure you need to mine and processing more Lepidolite to get an equivalent amount of LCE to Spodumene, however the process is different. Lepidolite does not need to be heated to such high temperatures because it doesn't need to "crack" (alpha to beta transition) in order to leach.
I've written about what happened with Nickel in Indonesia (using closely guarded Chona tech). That resulted in formerly pig iron destined laterite Nickel decimating the higher quality Australian sulphide based industry virtually overnight. Admittedly that appears to be another situation of extreme environmental damage, but it is evident that developing nations will forego those concerns to develop longer term economic prosperity.
I see so many excuses for the low Li pricing. At the time of the LTR DFS, a price in the US$700s for SC6 would have sounded OK. Not great, but still a comfortable margin. Among the excuses as to why lepidolite is competitive I rarely see others write of the comparatively extreme increase in cost of Australian production in recent years... how Australian hardrock has been moving further and further right on the cost curves. RIO couldn't have made stronger statements on that with their focus on brine, but those fell on deaf ears of those claiming if Aus Spodumene isn't profitable, no source can be. People point to Zimbabwe or Africa in general and say, that can't be competitive against LTR or it must be very low quality. Forget you can hire 20 workers for the typical cost of just 1 in Australia.
I've read this past week long diatribes (count this as a long diatribe - I am self aware) explaining why Chinese / Tibet brine cannot be competitive. I can only imagine the amount of cherry picking involved in the research to come to that conclusion. DYOR research and check out SunResin DLE or the history of Qinghai potash production of which Lithium salts were historically a byproduct.
Really this is just a stream of consciousness because I'm tired of explaining what's happening in the world of Lithium in a forum that dismisses large chunks of supply.
The major tool that China has to suppress pricing is by bringing on supply. We've seen how sensitive pricing is to changes in supply. I don't think there are major discrepancies in reported supply and demand figures. Rather there is a reluctantance to accept and count certain supply by some investors - especially here on HC.
I honestly would hate to be in your position separating the wheat from the chaff. Especially given the growing flood of AI - which I don't use. Reading HC, who, as a novice to the industry would know what to believe? It's an opaque industry and takes a massive amount of time to get a basic understanding of the supply chain. Reminds me of the old Twain adage, "never argue with stupid people, they will drag you down to their level and then beat you with experience".
I don't know why I bother sometimes. I do my best to substantiate more than anyone else in order to help people decide and in turn am confronted with easily debunkable "facts" from posters that claim crazy things like, I've done all the research so just trust me. They claim to block and that gets them out of having to substantiate. Not only is HC infested with questionable information, to put it mildly, but there are whole teams of attack dogs read to jump on anyone deemed not suitably positive enough and heap lightbulbs on often factually incorrect statements for writing what posters want to read.
As I've written before, it is a very silly place that reminds me of Monty Pythons Holy Grail Camelot scene.
I implore everyone to do their own research and encourage people to come back and question my statements with evidence. Just don't bother wasting your time interrogating me about my motives.
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