Thanks for the link ...it highlights why James Brown said Altura would only look at an alliance involving downstream processing if the partner was experienced .
If Wesfarmers was to put it’s hand up for Altura would it need Foreign Investment Board Approval?
And ‘soon ‘ (to continue the theorising ) there will be two huge allied lithium processing plants sitting side by side in Kwinana .....surely there is room for some extra processing?
FWIW Tianqi’s Greenbushes one is due to be fully operating in the very near future after a slow six month ramp up :
In January Sean Smith at The West Australian said: The Chinese group’s local general manager, Phil Thick, said yesterday that construction was mostly complete, with the plant beginning a commissioning process just before Christmas that could take up to six months.
“It’s a long ramp-up because the technology is relatively new and there will be challenges for us, but that’s fine, we’ve planned for that all along,” he said.
Tianqi is spending more than $700 million at Kwinana, including $300 million on a second stage already under way and expected to be completed late this year.
