Lithium Demand surge, page-1292

Ignore the day to day movement in the sp, PLS has the goods, they will fly soon enough and for a long time.

More importantly, we are having the wrong discussion arround supply/demand fundamentals. Many of us on this thread are still stuck in the debate regarding oversupply from the Li miners. That is not the case, there is a wall of demand comming from EV's and storage and, new supply coming from Oz and increased capacity from other existing producers will struggle to keep up with demand over the next 10 years.

Lithium miners are and need to be ahead of the curve (i.e. product specifications and orders between miner and downstream (offtake) customers are done years in advance, hense PLS sold out for 10 years). The offtakers are looking for security of supply, but right now the downstream converters are behind the curve, in that there is not enough capacity to convert to required Li Chemicals, hence current shortage of batteries.

As I have posted many times, this 15 year super cycle will experience short term bottlenecks along the way. You dont have to like or agree with this, its a free world, but thats the reality I'm working with at present. We all know there are converter plants being built arround the world (last count, I think 4 plants in Oz, 1 already under construction), however, many of these wont be up and running at nameplate until 2020 (a few in late 2019). Therefore, lack of available Li chemicals will delay battery production, delaying EV uptake ........

Converter capacity will increase incrementally each year over the next 2 to 3 years (in line with the miners), so it will be a gradual demand pull over that period, and then a wall of demand once all at nameplate. At that point, there will be opportunities for those less advanced junior Li miners that didn't get a tick to mine this time round.

Once again, demand is not an issue, converter capacity is. What will these short term hick ups mean for Li prices? I'm not sure, but any battery grade product from new mines with certainty of supply (i.e. those that manage to get finance), is being snapped up by the downstreamers in the blink of an eye, which implies security of future supply is more important than cost, thus tight market and in turn, prices remain elevated at or near current levels IMO.

I wouldn't worry about PLS, we in the middle of this, product already spoken for, and will likely be at nameplate on stage 2 when the converters have caught up, almost perfect timing. Speaks volume for quality of deposit and management.

AIMO, DYOR and GLTAH