Thanks lesv, I have been following this guy on X for a while now...

Thanks lesv, I have been following this guy on X for a while now and enjoy seeing the progress that is being made by Tesla at the plant in Texas.

One thing about Tesla, is they don’t do anything by halves.

When it is finished it should be up there with the biggest refineries in the world.

While an amazing amount of work has been done, there is a way to go before they are ready to commission it and commence the ramping process.

I am not sure when the latest estimate on when it will be commissioned but if they can do it before the end of the year they will have done well.

However, it is the period of time it takes to get it up to nameplate that matters most.

As a former holder of IGO and a present holder of PLS, I know that ramping is a long and drawn out process.

Going by the progress of Kwinana, Kemerton and Gwangyang refineries, I would say that it will be well into next year before the lithium hydroxide plant in Texas will be ready to receive regular shipments directly to the refinery. Therefore China should still be in the loop for some time to come.

From the last quarterly, a 2,000 tonne load of spod from the PLL allocation was transported by rail from NAL to Tesla.

I assume this will have gone to Texas to allow the qualification process to begin.

As the major elements of the plant have not yet been finished, they would probably have to have some type of demonstration plant for the spod from NAL to be refined on a small scale.

I know I am making quite a few assumptions here but it is all we have to go on at the moment, (unless of course there is something that the company has said that I am unaware of).

Just to make things clear, I would love all of the ex-China downstream refineries to be working at nameplate.

It would certainly make things better for PLL, SYAQ and most of the lithium miners outside of China.