Nice find Kd81, it's more telling than those useless...

Nice find Kd81, it's more telling than those useless company ANNs.

So essentially South Koreans, Chinese battery manufacturers are out, OEMs including Vinfast and Rivian are out too. As I hinted here a few months ago, they might be in talks with Twiggy's nickel business Wyloo and/or IGO. IGO have been looking to build their own downstream refinery (Pcam) to produce an NCM precursor product. They flagged that they want to build their plant in Perth's Kwinana industrial park, so BSX downstream ambitions would not fulfilled if they decide to establish a JV and build a plant in WA.

From IGO's perspective, the JV would make sense as they might need more feed as the Mincor ore is only suitable for blending due to the high arsenic content and the former Western Areas asset Cosmos was essentially written off in July due to sky-rocketing development costs of the project.

I am hopeful that IGO would change their mind and they may relocate their precursor plant to Vietnam, but realistically they have the upper hand here. If they wanted to build their Pcam in Perth, BSX would have very little wiggle room to negotiate on the location or the offtake/JV terms.