What are you talking about? Are you really holding LTR as it appears on your Disclosure?
If you are holding, why are you holding if you are so negative about the lithium market? Just sell and run away from lithium until 2027 as you said. You can still talk without holding, can't you.
It looks like you are new to lithium business as @Lurra said or you have become a shorter but not disclosing it like many other bastards here who put "Held" on their disclosure but downramping. (It's their new tactic; disclosure: Held Sentiment: sell or none. Dishonest PoSs).
I'm not going to talk to you much. I don't have much time to do that. If you really want to learn about the lithium business you have to spend a lot of time. You can read many technical posts here which we have created in last 5.5 years. Or you can do it by starting learning from lithium minerals in Wikipeadia or related web sites.
This lithium business is not like oil and gas, or iron ore, or nickel, copper etc. It's quite complicated. You have to become an analyst, but never listen to other insto and media analysts who mainly misleading the market.
You need to learn how a lithium ore grade affects its production, how the impurities in the lithium carbonate and hydroxide affects the battery quality, which impurities (iron, Mg, etc) affects the spod or brine production. How is a pegmatite structure affects the mine's operation. I can't finish this list. It's too long.
Lithium is the hardest mineral to learn for an investor. I took me to learn it properly and extensively 10 years now, but by full time working.
Talking about Mt Cattlin. I said before it's a finished project. I already posted some info about it on the other thread. It's a dead mine. It should have been closed long time ago.
For example, people asked me about CXO over the years. I didn't want to downramp it but I only said it's not for me. It is a dead mine as well. Will never be profitable.
I know a lot about Greenbushes. I put a lot of info about it here over the years and I will put some more soon. It's also a dieing project too. It has 7-8 years mine life then will be a high cost mine.
@Lurra said "Greenbushes is a giant lithium mine so they can adjust production quite fast (I think that they are constructing their 4th processing line at the mine)."
No mate, It's not as giant as you think. It has 2 chemical grade plants CGP1 and CGP2 and one technical grade plant. Technical grade plant's production is now very small, you can even ignore it. GB's production with 3 plants is 1.500kt. which means each plant is 500kt. But main production comes from CGP1 and 2. 700kt each at full capacity. That's it.
CGP1 is quite old. It was modified many times, added (inserted) new machines in the process circuit over the time. It's technically a mess now, but working at 75% recovery rate and it saves all GB mine. The CGP2 was built from scratch by using the CGP1's design core in 2018. It was supposed to be a superior machine with much higher recovery rate than GCP1. They thought that they made a good plant. But it has been a disaster. It worked only at 50% recovery rate the shut down in 2019 because it was not making money. Then they made a lot of work to increase its recovery rate. Finally they increased the recovery rate to 60%, then more work done now it's working at 67% recovery rate.
What they are doing is they just loading the highest grade ore from the mine to these machines for having low cost operation. They will run out of that higher grade ore in 7-8 years. So that mine is going to be a high cost mine.
I'll just give you a quick graph which I'm going to post it on my detailed GB post later on.
See the "Grade ore mined" section.
In just 4 quarters (means in one year) the ore grade they feed the plant went down from 2.89% to 2.23%. (It was actually went to 2.1% once)
That is a 20% loss in grade. They are depleting the mine very quickly. Tianqi don't care about it either.
i will give you the mine grade plans you later on. I will show you the details. They are mining the highest grade of the mine. Anyway I will give it now. Here it is. I'm not going to make much comment about it now though. You just read my notes on it (black marking and writing is mine)
This market needs to open their eyes. People in the sector and analysts should see these points. These are very important. If you don't understand where a mine is going to how you can invest on it.
How you can invest on IGO? I wouldn't put one dollar in IGO for example. It's nickel business is dead and lithium business have a short life. However it may still buy ALB's stake, stupidly.
That's why LTR's KV is the best lithium project in the world. Very long mine life, very high grade, very low impurities, at very good location, 3rd generation state of the art mine, etc,etc.
KV process plant is interestingly basic design with state of the art machines. So it works very smoothly.
That's why LTR's ramp up process has already turned to full commercial production in one month. It's the design and execution of first quality people with first quality machines.
GB and PLS plants designs have changed many times, so they are like a person have had 10 surgery operation but still has to run a marathon.
It has an expansion plan but will never be executed because it requires $3b investment and 3 years closure of mine (because they have dig in a giant open pit and move the plant to another place). I have a post about that as well. They have water problem, tailings dam problem, etc. It's also very hard for them to keep this production rate with this high grade ore.
ALB has no control on GB mine. Tianqi controls it. I have posted the details of that issue before. You can search my posts about it. So Tianqi, the Chines company now increases the prodution to supply spod to China for keeping the spod price low.
I think ALB wants to sell its stake and get rid of GB mine because Tianqi is looting that mine.
But how long can they do it is the question.
Anyways, this is a long story too. I will make a detailed tech post about GB mine as well.
There are different issues for all of the other mines. I know them all in detail.
I can tell you that LTR's KV project is the best lithium mine in the world.
You don't know the technical details of KV mine now as it appears. The resource style (pegmatites), ore type, the grades, the underground mining advantages, the low impurities, the process plant features, tier-1 process plant contractors.
For example PLS constructed its plant to the cheapest contractor but then they sued them, the contractor bankrupted and didn't finished the job if I recall correctly, because the contractor didn't do the job well the plant didn't work well for long time. It's still the same design with a lot of add-ons over the time.
What C Ellison said on his webcast if you watched it; something like 'Bald Hill was a mess when we got it, we still have to do a lot of job the make it right'.
Wodgina has different problems. The common problem in Pilbara region is high iron content in the ore and high iron content in the spod. Water problem is big there. Not much rain so has to use the U/G water. The U/G water is contaminated with a lot of other minerals so they have to clear it (cost) when using in the plant.
PLS produced SC6 years ago but with 1.2% iron. You can't say it SC6 as SC6 spod spec requires less than 1% iron in it. So it's so hard to remove the iron (costly) neither Wodgina nor PLS would prefer to produce SC6 spot. They will always produce 5.3-5.6% spod which is still working good in China.
I recommend you not listen to the media or the directors of the lithium companies. DYOR. Otherwise you will be misled. Or you mislead people here.
The lithium business requires a good technical background, it's not for people talking BS. We can easily put down those type of people here.
Anyways. I cut it here.
LTR Price at posting:
62.5¢ Sentiment: Hold Disclosure: Held
(20min delay)