Is BSM sitting on gold?, page-9

Well, the prices differ between spot prices (higher) and contract negotiated prices (lower). Lets say for contract prices, recently :

6% lithium concentrate : 900$ per tonne

99.95% lithium carbonate (Li2CO3) : 12.000$ per tonne

99.95% lithium hydroxide (LiOH) : 17.000$ per tonne


Around 3 Tonnes of Lithium concentrate (at 6% lithium content) are needed to produce 1 Tonne of lithium carbonate compound (which contains 18.8% lithium), and 5 Tonnes of lithium concentrate are needed to produce 1 Tonne of lithium hydroxide compound (which contains 29% lithium).

Of course a lithium concentrate needs to be extensively chemically processed to produce lithium carbonate and then lithium hydroxide. It is an extremely high energy intensive operation, and special processing plants are mostly built in China to do this processing.

If BSM finds a large and high grade deposit of spodumene (the mineral containing lithium in nature in concentrations of 1% up to 6% lithium) then they could put a low capex mine to produce 6% lithium concentrate (generally operations of more than 100.000 tonnes per year at OPEX not exceeding 300$ per tonne, the margins are huge and the profits would be out of this world).


Note :
Lithium carbonate (Li₂CO₃) contains around 18.8% lithium; therefore one tonne of lithium is equivalent to 5.3 tonnes of lithium carbonate. Another compound that is often quoted is lithium oxide – Li₂O – which contains 46.5% lithium, around 2.5 times that of LCE, with lithium hydroxide (LiOH, 29% Li) also being used.
Source : http://www.weare121.com/blog/a-lithium-primer/