“While this is all promising, the future widespread commercial...

“While this is all promising, the future widespread commercial success of these technologies is not a foregone conclusion.

"[There are] still significant challenges to commercialisation. It's still very early days," says Andrew Miller from Benchmark Mineral Intelligence.

"The expansion of lithium projects, particularly when you factor in commercialisation of new technology, has a very low success rate in the lithium market. Even major producers typically come in behind schedule and over budget."

A skills gap may also be exposed within the industry, with lithium expertise stuck in traditional evaporation ponds knowledge rather than the newer technologies. As Mr Snydacker puts it, this "cultural inertia could become difficult".”