Good News & Bad News, page-71

There is still a bottleneck for battery grade processing, becuase the converters have already purchased both battery grade and sub grade product. I believe that they would be blending the good stuff with the shite, which would likely require re-processing to bring it up to a required standard, thus higher costs and impacting converter economics, now flowing through to miner economics . In the past few years since 2015/16 many of the Chinese battery packs contained below standard materials, as a result, those batteries are not living up to advertised performance and therefore warranties.

Now that ROW bringing new EV models to the market, battery packs standards have risen sharply, noting many non Chinese OEM's are or will be producing many EV's in China. The recent and pending changes to the Chinese subsidies/credit system is part of the overall plan to lift battery pack standards to be on par with ROW OEM standards. As a result, modification to processing lines (re-tooling) is ongoing, which will take some time to catch up, nonetheless heading in the right direction.

What we need is clear distinction between pricing of battery and non-battery material, but cant see that coming any time soon, which will probably continue to play into the hands of the Chinese converters, as all raw material grade lumped together, including prices.