Good News & Bad News, page-25530

Here are some more interesting points.

"With that in mind, here are a few ASX companies looking to grab a share of the multi-billion dollar lithium hydroxide market."

It goes on to list producers. IGO, MIN, AKE.

And then under the heading "Under Construction" it notes the following.

"PILBARA MINERALS (ASXLS)

Pilbara Minerals has been the poster child for the primacy of the miner in the recent lithium boom, with converters obliterating their own margins just to get their hands on lower-grade spodumene from its Pilgangoora operation in auctions on its Battery Material Exchange platform over the past two years.

Prices lifted to more than $US8000/t on a 6 per cent Li2O basis at one point last year.

But CEO Ken Brinsden’s retirement and replacement by understudy Dale Henderson paved the way for its transition to a new phase of life with an eye to the longer-term outlook for the lithium market.

With plans to ramp up its Pilgangoora mine to 680,000tpa approved and an expansion to 1Mtpa in the works, PLS has begun construction in South Korea on a downstream JV with early backer POSCO.

The industrial giant is building the 43,000tpa Gwanyang plant, which will use around 315,000tpa of PLS concentrate as its feedstock.

PLS has an initial 18 per cent stake with an option to increase its ownership to 30 per cent. The first 21,500tpa processing train is expected to begin commissioning and ramp up late this year, with a second train of equal size to do the same early next year."

Cheery to read on a down day. While it is not news for many of the LTer's around here - it serves as a useful reminder of what a good company looks like and where it is heading.