Good News & Bad News, page-3713

There is always the spectre of Fungibility with Lithium. Not all Lithium is useful to all customers and one source is NOT capable of being substituted in place of one another. Customers need a consistent supply of the same product because their processing is built around that particular supply. I think that consistency by the supplier will be part of and key to continued success.

I have not seem any real discussion of whether say Wodgina's Spod can be substituted for Pilgan Spod without changes needed in their processing system. They certainly cannot keep changing from one supplier to another if there are differences in impurities. (iron comes to mind)

So it is simplistic to say the world produces X amount of Spod and that we need X plus 50% and there is a shortfall. The reality will be that customers will need consistent supply from the same source. I have sufficient Confirmation Bias to believe PLS has a top quality product that is consistent as they have tuned their plant to the best possible output. In this regard the price is almost secondary to the customer if he does not have to retune his process each time a different Spod is sourced.

So in my opinion the three factors for the customer will be in order of importance Reliability Consistency Price

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