Joe Lowry’s comments in today’s St*ckhead:One of the world’s...

Joe Lowry’s comments in today’s St*ckhead:

One of the world’s foremost lithium market experts has made the bold call that the lithium market will never be oversupplied in his lifetime, saying an influx of high cost material to satisfy the demands of Chinese battery and electric vehicle makers has moved the cost curve higher than it’s ever been.

Delivering a keynote talk at the Vertical Events New World Metals Conference in Melbourne today, Global Lithium’s Joe Lowry — who has amassed a following of almost 25,000 people on the platform formerly known as Twitter with his frank and fearless commentary on the lithium industry — said prices could not return to levels that saw the industry routed between 2018 and 2020.

“I do believe oversupply will happen at some point, I believe I will probably be dead when it does happen,” Lowry told delegates at Melbourne’s Grand Hyatt hotel.

“And I don’t think I’m gonna get hit by a beer truck this afternoon so I just would say that to have lithium in oversupply with the kind of growth we’re having requires a circular economy where recycling is a meaningful part of supply.

“But the EV world isn’t at a state where you have to have enough EVs out there.

“And then they have a seven to 11 year life. And then the batteries go into energy storage for a few years.

“So it’s going to be a long, long time before the circular economy has raw material to become circular.

“The other problem with the recyclers is it’s a lot easier to get the cobalt in the nickel out of these.”