MIN looking to go the sulphate...

MIN looking to go the sulphate route.

https://xxxxxxxx.com.au/resources/ground-breakers-minres-boss-lets-loose-on-downstream-lithium-plans-goldies-red-5-westgold-perseus-reporting/

Could be something LLL/Ganfeng could look at in the future for markets outside of China, due to the Mali logistics. Transport was close to 1/3 of OPEX in last DFS Update

Why has MinRes turned its back on China?

China, on the face ofit, is the best place in the world to build a lithium hydroxide plant. Therethey emerge in months off a virtual production line, ready to supply batterygrade chemicals for the world’s largest EV market.

But there arecomplexities to doing business in China that make the roughly $1 billioninvestment MinRes had planned there a non-starter.

“So these plants aregoing to be running for 40-50 years plus so you go into China, you got like 13%VAT on your spot, you’ve got to make a minimum profit over there,” Ellisonsaid.

“If you sell yourhydroxide in China, you pay the Chinese tax obviously, but then your money iscaught there for a year and when you bring it out, if you bring it from Chinadirect to Australia, there’s another 10% withholding tax that disappears.

“And if you send yourhydroxide out of China and sell it here, there’s another 14.5% VAT, add all thatup and you’ve got to operate so that’s half the reason we’re not going to be inChina.”

Australia, on theother hand, is predictable and produces material that will be sought-after forstrategic and ethical reasons by carmakers hoping to pull in incentives fromthe USA’s Inflation Reduction Act and similar policies in Europe.

“If I operate here inAustralia we know what the taxes are. We know what the quality of the workforce(is) we’ve got here,” Ellison said.

“That’s where we’regoing to be and we’re going to partner up with Europe and North America, it’sso much more economic for us.

“Stability goingforward. I mean, anyone out there right now that wants to buy hydroxide, theywant it to come from Australia, that’s their first choice in the world, becauseit’s ethical and they know that environmentally and the way we look after ourpeople we do it right.

“So we’re asought-after product. And we want to keep that sanitised if we can.”